The focus this Fall is truly on best practice sharing - providing your company with a real opportunity to hone in on the lessons learned by your peers.  We are pleased to have companies such as Blommer Chocolate Canada, Burnbrae Farms Ltd., Trillium Health Care Products, Sun Rich Fresh Foods, ABB Robotics, Frito Lay Canada and Gay Lea Foods sharing best practices in relationship to various aspects of their businesses across the Province!   Each of these companies are looking forward to presenting their stories and we hope that you will gather ideas that may assist your company in your day to day activities.

These upcoming food sector events also provide you with a forum to bring your issues to the table.  Challenges that you may think unique to your operation have often been encountered by others and having those unbiased, unfamiliar sets of minds turning to focus on an issue of relevance to your business, can often yield solutions or another perspective that may not have been otherwise explored.  How often do we walk by a process or piece of equipment without realizing that a change may make a significant impact on our people, our process, our bottom lines? 

From a more personal side, activities built around networking with your peers also affords you the opportunity to reach out beyond your specific area of expertise or industry or even sector at large to build relationships which transcend beyond our day-to-day learning activities - opening the door, if you will, to benchmark on a more individual and personal level as issues arise.  Knowing that you can call a peer to directly bounce an idea off of or to seek sourcing information, lend assistance in an emergency or downtime situation, or share experience on the hurdles a journey on improvement or certification might be presenting - provides you with knowledge that could inevitably lead to less challenges, more streamlined approaches, new product development and inspiration, an impact on your financial spreadsheet and just simply that out-of-the-box thinking that business competitiveness requires in today's consumer-driven global marketplace. 

The wisdom, experience and program information provided by guest speakers who are experts in Industry and those in support of business activities, the opportunity to listen to peers in manufacturing  share their journeys in relation to our topic and their own continuous improvement initiatives, coupled with building relationships through team-oriented activities such as the Food Sector SIG networking events present - can only assist to ease your path to success and aid in any continuous improvement initiative your business embarks on!

With an incredibly busy year so far behind us marked by some excellent value added presentations and peer learning opportunities, we are looking forward to an absolute fabulous fall line-up of learning!  We encourage your company to join us at these grass-roots sessions and take advantage of the chance to leverage knowledge from your fellow experts in food manufacturing!

September 14, 2010

Topic:    Getting Unstuck - How to Get Traction in Your Planning Process
Host:     Blommer Chocolate Canada, Campbellford, Ontario

Doug Harper, General Manager, Blommer Chocolate Canada together with EMC Canada cordially invites you to Campbellford to take part in a very special one-time Event that focuses on Getting Traction in Your Planning Process.  Doug will be sharing some of their experiences in true best practice form and through workshop format, participants will focus on some of the issues directly facing them in business today.

• Does your facility struggle to get things done?
• Do projects or problems drag on and on?
• Are you unable to get the results you need?

It is through interaction, teamwork and experience that we hope this session enables you to make progress on the projects you need to stay competitive on!

(A recent article on Blommer Chocolate Canada can be found by clicking on the following link:  http://www.northumberlandnews.com/news/article/160599.)

September 15 and 16, 2010

Topic:                   Supply Chain Management
Hosts:                  Parmalat, Winchester, Ontario
                            Sun Rich Fresh Foods Inc., Brampton, Ontario
                            Ingersoll Cheese & Agricultural Museum, Ingersoll, Ontario
Speaker:               Supply Chain Sector Council
Best Practices:      Burnbrae Farms Ltd., Trillium Health Care Products, Sun Rich Fresh Foods, ABB Robotics, and Frito Lay Canada

The goal of this Special Food Sector Event is to provide an introduction and overview on Supply Chain Management.  Supplementing our Speaker presentation are Best Practices showcasing the opportunities and systems in place by Food Sector Members.

• How much time have you given to thinking about the Supply Chain in your organization?
• What are the benefits of understanding the individual components and overall process of SCM?
• How many people in your organization are directly involved in SC activity?
• Where can you start or if you are already underway - what are some of the challenges that you have or may be facing that others may learn from?

Join us as we explore the impact your Supply Chain can have - from raw material through to customer delivery - in your bid to be more efficient, effective and competitive!

As we progress into the fall, we also look forward to presentations on Marketing, Branding and Labelling, and to a very special Best Practice Overview with Gay Lea Foods Co-operative - one of the Top 100 Employers in Canada!

If you are interested in participating, sharing your best practice, or have some ideas for our 2011 Schedule that you feel would benefit your peers in industry, we would certainly be very happy to hear from you at anytime!

Have a great day!

Take care,

Bren