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Every food business in the food chain has its own unique and complex food operations to come up with for its product. These operations describe the everyday activities of a business and are comprehensively analyzed in a HACCP plan. This step is done by building a HACCP flow chart or otherwise known as a HACCP flow diagram. This diagram is a graphical representation of all your processes and is usually considered a critical tool and the most difficult part of a HACCP plan. It will be used as a basis to map out the potential hazards in your operations to prevent any adverse health effects of foodborne diseases which may originate from your processes.
Making a flow chart of your operations may seem easy, but it has a lot of technicalities in itself and requires much attention and a firm commitment to preventing any food safety issue. A food restaurant owner may turn to food safety professionals or food safety chart software to create their flow charts. Once you do it yourselves, it just seems too complicated to create. After all, an actual flow diagram document is a great and solid foundation of a comprehensive HACCP plan. In this article, we briefly go through what a flow chart sample is and how to create it the quickest and easiest way. Also, feel free to use our HACCP flow chart template. Just replace the words on the form where applicable and download or print it out.
If you want to take the easiest way and let the software do the job for you, sign up for HACCP builder software and see how machine learning creates the flow chart sample automatically together with all other compliance documents.
Feel free to check our entire template hub containing all the documents that are important and most wanted parts of your HACCP plan. Just change the wording by clicking on the words and then print them out.
In the food industry, a HACCP flow chart represents the entire process categories that your raw material goes through during processing until the product is served to the customer. It is your business's design workflow and is a fundamental requirement of a HACCP plan. All steps in your production process must be well-emphasized in this simple outline so that the whole HACCP employee will be able to evaluate each step comprehensively to prevent loss of control and consistently produce a safe product. As such, staff from all concerned departments must participate in making it, including the assistant manager, the food safety specialist in the business, operations manager, head of kitchen staff, and food engineers. Any type of food business, including fast-food restaurants, retail food stores, and food courts, need to create a food flow chart.
A HACCP food flow chart or a commodity flow diagram is one of the preliminary steps in making a HACCP food safety management system. In a way, it is the workflow diagram or business process diagram of your food business. This document must represent your food processing operations well for all the food prep team members as well as for the food safety auditor during an evaluation. It serves as a basis for the next steps of the HACCP food safety management system making such as establishing critical limits, corrective actions, monitoring records, and preventive controls. Missing just one food operation in a HACCP flowchart diagram can increase the risk of food safety hazards in your food business and risks the successful implementation of your HACCP plan. This instance shows you the ability of flow charts to clearly display all the needed information for your business.
All food charts are almost different and have complex processes. They are uniquely based on your processing structure. Depending on the complexity of your whole processing steps, your food flow chart may become difficult to make. Complete flow diagrams are composed of flow chart symbols which are usually basic flowchart shapes. These symbols can include a rounded rectangle shape that contains the process, inward and outward arrows to suggest the flow of the process, diamonds for steps requiring decisions, and circles that indicate the starting and ending point. Other flow chart symbols may include curved lines, connector lines, and other basic shape objects such as rhomboid shapes to signify input materials. The whole flow chart design does not have to be as technical as an engineering drawing.
The flow of food in a processing setup pertains to the path that the raw materials go through to become the finished product that is ready to be served. It is a descriptive document of your restaurant operations plan and product flow. Determining this whole process of product flow is an important job for the whole HACCP team to prevent loss of control of food safety and to make your food safer. Each step in your food manufacturing process has its functions. Whether may it be receiving raw materials, processing, packaging, or anything in between, all of these steps were included to perform certain tasks. Knowing the logical flow of foods through the assembly line manufacturing allows your HACCP team to see what food safety risks and potential hazards may have a high chance of occurring.
The flow of food normally starts from receiving the raw materials which then go straight to manufacturing or ingredient storage. Direct use of raw materials requires extensive inspection because the products will be immediately used for a food process operation. As an example, a physical hazard in raw material production is most likely to be detected such as insect parts, glass shards, or pieces of metal. Failure to detect these potential hazards at this point can cause other subsequent contaminations such as the growth of enteric pathogens and other biological hazards and create unsafe food for consumption that can put public health at risk.
A HACCP process flow diagram is a handy tool and a prerequisite requirement for making an initial plan for HACCP as mandated by regulatory agencies and your government for establishments such as a food restaurant business. It is the last part of the preliminary steps before applying the HACCP principles such as hazard analysis. Your health hazard identification and hazard analysis stage will be based on this document. Depending on your country's legislation regarding the requirement of a HACCP food safety system, it may be required to have a restaurant operation flowchart as part of your HACCP plan. In case you need to be HACCP certified, you will definitely be required by law to have it.
A food flow chart is also useful even if not for HACCP food safety program purposes. Food processing plants and other establishments benefit from having an accurate record of your entire standard operation process which can help you easily identify at which point do errors usually occur.
The traditional way of making a HACCP flow chart is manually mapping the whole process by hand and inputting it through applications such as MS Word and the like. To date, there are a lot of common tools and software that you can use to create a detailed flowchart design. Whatever format or tool you decide to use, make sure that it is flexible. Revisions and improvements are very common especially in the food business similar to what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. Remember that flexibility is a criterion you must always consider.
1. Pen & paper - Perhaps the most basic quality tool to make a HACCP food flow diagram. It is allowed to create your flow process chart on paper, even in the 21st century. It's not the most convenient way, but when you're not very technical, go the traditional way. This method is also a great way to make an initial draft. In terms of flexibility, this method is great. Although, a flow chart from scratch can be tedious and hard to make.
2. Microsoft Office solutions – Excel, Word, and Powerpoint are reasonably good for creating a commodity flow diagram. All the elements needed to make a food flow chart are in these applications. It just takes time and skill to find them and use them to make a flow diagram. Flexibility-wise, this is also a good choice. The downside to this is that you have to make everything from scratch. This means that all ideas must come from your restaurant employees.
3. Design tool - design tools such as Creately, Miro, Draw, etc. are widely available on the internet. This solution is an advanced way of making a food flow chart and can be customized in more ways than one. Despite this, the level of technicality far exceeds using Microsoft Office solutions.
4. Food safety software - Some HACCP software companies such as FoodDocs include an automatic HACCP plan builder that creates a flow process chart automatically and is customizable at any time using basic editing options. Using our software, you do not have to come up with all the ideas by yourself. Our expert-guided AI will help you build your detailed flow chart in minutes.
