Quality Assurance Technologist in Northfleet

Location: Northfleet, Kent, United Kingdom

As a Quality Assurance Technologist, you will be responsible for ensuring that all product and processes comply with food safety, legality, authenticity and quality requirements throughout all stages of the production process based on a weekly rota on areas/responsibilities.

Main Duties

• Monitoring and upholding of all food safety and legal requirements.
• Understanding of company policies and procedures to enable checking and improving compliance within production.
• Assessing quality of fruit throughout the production process to ensure compliance to internal and customer specifications.
• Verifying Critical Control Points (CCPs) to ensure critical limits are being met.
• Reporting any failures to the QA Supervisor and support in corrective action implementation.
• Creating new programmes in the metal detectors and checkweighers and troubleshooting issues during production.
• Daily checks of factory processes and procedures to ensure compliance and good manufacturing practices are adhered to.
• Identifying and reporting any quality, food safety or compliance concerns to QA Supervisors and Customer Technical Team as appropriate to enable quick rectification.
• Thoroughly conducting practical internal audits including CCP, GMP, Fabrication, Glass and Hard Plastic etc. paperwork to facilitate traceability requests.
• Collecting and registering product samples for microbiological testing.
• Following the sampling plan to correctly take and accurately register swabs, air plates and water samples.
• Completing and supporting Print Room operations as required based on the rota.
• Conducting daily Taste Panels as required (start of life and end of life).
• Convey accurate and insightful reporting of taste panel results, ensuring details are provided of any positive or negative aspects from the panel and actions taken to rectify issues.
• Coordinate any immediate corrective actions from product that fails to meet quality parameters and provide details of this to key stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Ensure the taste panel room is maintained in a clean and hygienic manner including worktops and fridges.
• Print and manage copies of Customer Quality Standards, ensuring the correct versions are available as references.
• Assessing quality of finished product in Assembly and Collation to ensure compliance to internal and customer specifications.
• Completion of QUID spot checks on the line.
• Completion of tray compliance audits in Collation to assess quality and adherence to specifications.
• Communication to QA and Production teams on findings to enable swift rectification of quality issues.
• Assessing quality of fruit throughout the production process (raw material through to finished product) to ensure compliance to internal and customer specifications.
• Assessment includes, but is not limited to; count of defects, quality attribute assessment (appearance, taste and texture), against the customer specification.
• Carrying out a Quality Control circuit in both the low risk and high care areas as appropriate, focusing on preparation and assembly areas.
• Monitor and record finished product weights checks for all products alongside QUID checks for components.
• Recording of quality details, as required, including taking pictures or counting of defects.
• Understanding of Customer standards and requirements to ensure follow-through and adherence to specification.
• To address any non-conforming products and activities quickly, ensuring that both the PrepWorld brand and customer brands are protected.
• Coach Production Operatives on the correct handling of raw materials and understanding of defects.
• Completion of the on hold and non-conformance procedures as appropriate, alongside the shift report and any other logs that may be implemented.
• Operating in a tidy, organised, and efficient manner to complete all QA operations and maintain order within the Print Room and QA Lab (Taste Panel room).
• Acting proactively to identify areas for improvement.
• Acting with the customer in mind.
• Support for the wider Technical Team as required.

Key Accountabilities

• Identifying areas of non-compliance and reporting correctly to enable corrective actions and route cause analysis.
• Assessing fruit quality throughout the factory process to uphold internal and customer standards.
• Following the sampling plan to ensure all samples are taken and registered correctly.
• Monitoring food safety compliance and reporting of any issues.
• Completing paperwork to a high level of accuracy.

Qualifications

• GCSE Maths A-C (or equivalent).

Specific Knowledge & Experience

• (Preferable) experience in the food industry.
• (Preferable) experience with Print Room operations and printing/ editing software.

Specific Skills

• Self-organised approach and the ability to plan a workload.
• Good work ethic.
• Flexible and ability to adapt ways of working to support team requirements.
• Previous experience in QA/ QC in the food environment (especially short life, chilled, high care, prepared fruit).
• Sensory training beneficial.
• Ability to use a range of terms to describe fruit quality and defects.
• Good time management.
• Good standard of spoken and written English.
• IT literate, the role involves a lot of computer work, so proficiency in IT system is essential.
• Excellent attention to detail.

Shift Pattern

• Days: Sunday to Wednesday.
• Shift: Day Shift.
• Hours: 05:30 – 17:30.

Salary

• L1: £13.06 per hour.
• L2: £13.44 per hour.
• L3: £13.80 per hour (Rate dependent on experience).