Would you eat a McDonalds Big Mac that was out-of-date, had been dropped on the floor, and made with a stranger’s bare hands?

No! Me neither.

Unfortunately, that’s what thousands of people in China, unknowingly, did.

Back in 2015, the Chinese meat suppliers for McDonald’s were secretly filmed and caught:

“Handling meat and chicken with their bare hands, taking meat that had fallen on the floor and adding it back on to the production line…and forging production dates on beef patties.” – ET2C, Lessons on the Importance of Quality Control Checks

Around 4,300 McDonalds beef patties were tested and found to be out-of-date and contaminated with bacteria.

As a result, over 2,000 McDonald’s outlets across Asia were dramatically affected. The reputation of McDonald’s and their meat supplier was irreversibly damaged, and McDonald’s saw a 7.3% drop in sales.

McDonald’s was definitely not ‘lovin it’.

If only they’d used Enterprise Quality Management Software (EQMS) to regulate their supplier’s meat handling processes and control the quality of the produce they were delivering.

Companies who use EQMS to manage quality, experience fewer product quality issues (less than 1%), and improve their productivity by 20%.

Keen to find out more? Join me in this Process Street post as we run through the following:

• What is EQMS and how does it work?
• Who uses EQMS?
• Is EQMS it just for regulated organizations?
• What are the bottlenecks of EQMS?
• The best EQMS alternative (+free templates)?
• Top 8 EQMS software

Let’s make our way through the golden arches and get started!
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The year is 2025. Over 465 exabytes of new data is generated each day. The global cybersecurity market is worth $241 billion. Your managed services provider is still using a process document dated March 2019, and you’re starting to regret not having gone with that ISO 27001 certified provider.

Hell, at this point you’re starting to think even an in-house ISMS (Information Security Management System) implementation would have been a better option.

But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s return to the present. Is ISO 27001 all it’s cracked up to be? Whatever your stance on ISO, it’s undeniable that many companies see ISO 27001 as a badge of prestige, and using ISO 27001 to implement (and potentially certify) your ISMS may well be a good business decision for you.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the foremost standard for information security management – ISO 27001:2013, and investigate some best practices for implementing and auditing your own ISMS.

Here is a summary of what we’ll cover in this Process Street article:

• ISO 27001: The basics & why standards are important
• Who needs ISO 27001?
• How to implement ISO 27001
• Free ISO 27001 checklist
• How to get ISO 27001 certified
• Integrating your ISMS with other ISO standards

If you just want the free checklist for implementing and auditing your ISMS, you can grab that here. Otherwise, read on!
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During a routine cryogenic proof test on 28th February 2020, SpaceX’s Starship SN1 prototype suffered a catastrophic failure.

Musk indicated that the failure was due to bad welding at the base of the rocket, around the area of the puck that is designed to bear the engine thrust load.

Starship SN3 suffered a similar fate during a round of pressure testing, where the lower of the two tanks collapsed due to test configuration mistakes.

Of course, this is the whole point of testing; failures such as these are half expected, and should be planned for accordingly. Failures like SN1 and SN3 pave the way for future successes like the Crew Dragon launch to the ISS. Failure is an essential ingredient that is necessary to push the limits of understanding.

But it does raise an interesting and important question – when failure is a statistical inevitability, what role does process standardization and quality management play in the prevention and meaningful gain of failure?

In this Process Street article we’ll be looking at AS9100D, the foremost aerospace quality management standard. How can you implement, maintain, and utilize AS9100D to proactively mitigate failure, as well as a tool to learn from errors and failure to drive improvement and optimization?

We’ll cover:

• What is AS9100D?
• AS9100D vs ISO 9001
• Importance of aerospace quality management
• Benefits of AS9100D
• Free AS9100D templates
• How to implement AS9100D with Process Street

Want to skip straight to the templates? No worries! Here’s a preview of the free templates to come and a list that you can use to cut straight to the chase.

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Taking the appropriate measures to ensure products we come into close contact with are clean & safe is now more important than ever, and there is nothing we come into closer contact with than food.

If you are in the food manufacturing, farming, processing, packaging, catering, or another food-related industry, a robust, well-documented Food Safety Management System (FSMS) is essential to maintaining a strong position in the market.

Of course, strict regulations that make sure the food we ingest is safe is nothing new. In the US, food safety regulations have been developed since the mid-1800s.

However, It was the worldwide implementation of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system in the early 90s that really kicked things off on a global scale. Since then, numerous kinds of schemes and certifications have been developed to monitor the industry more closely.

FSSC 22000 (and the resulting FSSC 22000 checklists) is one of the newest and most highly-respected of such schemes.

The FSSC 22000 system was designed to provide companies in the food industry with an ISO-based food safety management system certification that is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Recognition by GFSI provides worldwide recognition and acceptance by food manufacturers and retailers.

“GFSI recognition demonstrates that the Scheme meets the highest standards globally leading to international food industry acceptance. Furthermore the Scheme is widely accepted by Accreditation Bodies worldwide and supported by important stakeholders like FoodDrinkEurope (FDE) and the Consumer Brands Association (CBA).” –  FSSC 22000 Scheme

Also, the fact that the scheme is ISO-based means that it integrates nicely with other management systems such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.

In other words, FSSC 22000 certification is not only an internationally-recognized scheme that helps you improve market reach, food safety processes, and works great with ISO standards, but is also a powerful marketing tool.

“Statistics show that approximately 1 out of 4 certified companies are asking their suppliers to achieve certification. Chances are that if you have not been asked yet, you will be asked in the near future. Becoming certified can help you stay competitive and qualified towork with your current customers as well as to gain access to new ones.” – FSSC 22000 Quick Start Guide

In this post, Process Street is releasing a set of 6 FSSC 22000 checklist templates that will enable you to conduct meticulous internal audits and have an actionable, clear picture of everything that needs to be done in order to gain certification.

Click the links below to go to that section of the article:

• Overview of steps to gaining FSSC 22000 certification
• FSSC 22000: Process Street checklists that get you to the finish line
• FSSC 22000 Checklists: GFSI Compliance Checklist
• FSSC 22000 Checklists: HACCP Compliance Checklist
• FSSC 22000: ISO 22000 Audit Preparation Checklist
• FSSC 22000 Checklists: ISO/TS 22002-1 Internal Audit Checklist
• FSSC 22000 Checklists: ISO/TS 22002-3 Internal Audit Checklist
• FSSC 22000 Checklists: ISO/TS 22002-4 Internal Audit Checklist
• Perform superior FSSC 22000 audits with our approvals feature
• Other useful resources for establishing a first-class FSMS

If you’re just here for the checklists, here’s a taster of the free ones you’ll be getting!

Before we dive into the checklists proper, however, let’s take a quick look at a basic overview of what the steps are to gaining certification, and clarify where the checklists we have created fit into the process.
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I didn’t expect to get ill the last time I ordered food via UberEats.

Was it because of the rib eye steak? How the cook prepared it? Or how the steak was transported to the restaurant from the producer?

I don’t know.

What I do know, though, is that the CDC estimates 48 million people each year get sick from foodborne illness.

No matter your role in the food supply chain – whether you’re a primary producer, a storage operator, or a subcontractor to a food outlet – a food safety management system is necessary. Otherwise, you’re exposing people to illnesses that could potentially be life-threatening. Even if the illness is fleeting, the long-term result of a consumer’s sickness will result in your brand being tarnished.

Luckily, ISO 22000 can help you create and sustain a solid food safety management system.

In this post, I’ll discuss what ISO 22000 is in more detail, its requirements, its benefits, and why food safety management systems are just so important. Plus, I’ll explain how Process Street can help you gain ISO 22000 certification!

Read through the following sections to get clued up:

• What is ISO 22000?
• The importance of a food safety management system
• ISO 22000 requirements
• The benefits of ISO 22000
• Use Process Street to gain ISO 22000 certification!

Hungry to learn more?

It’s time to dig in!

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SOPs (often pronounced S-O-P) are basically just another way to think about processes. Specifically, with a focus on formally defining the best way of doing something.

In business terms, that means saving time and money by building a clear, concise set of instructions for all of your internal processes. Policies (or standards) are important too; SOPs are kind of like a hybrid of policy and procedure.

Traditionally, SOPs were useful in principle, but often suffered from being difficult to maintain and crucially, hard to enforce. What good is an SOP if it lives its life sat on a dusty stack of paper forms? Your SOPs should be actionable, and that’s where BPM software like Process Street comes in.

If you understand how to build, maintain, and optimize SOPs with software, you can supercharge your standard operating procedures.

In this article, we want to give you everything you will ever need to know about SOPs, including:

• What is an SOP?
• Importance and benefits of standardizing your processes
• SOPs as a facet of BPM
• How to write SOPs
• SOP management software
• SOP templates
• Auditing your SOPs
• SOP & ISO
• Using Process Street for superpowered SOPs
• More SOP resources

Each section will be as concise as possible, with links out to further reading wherever appropriate. Let’s start with the basics.
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“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped.” – Eric Moody, British Airways Captain, Business Insider

The words no one wants to hear when they’re tightly strapped into an aluminum tube, flying at 900kph, 35,000 feet up in the air.

One in three Americans either feels anxious or scared to fly and 73% are fearful of mechanical problems during flight.

“On a flight from Kiev to Toronto, several screws fell out of the ceiling onto my lap…When air started sucking out of a loose seam around my window, I really started to panic.” – Nate Drescher, The Travel

But air travel in the United States is the safest in the world. The odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 5,000. The odds of dying in a plane crash are about one in 11,000,000.

So, putting our fears aside for a second, why is flying the safest way to travel?

Well, partly because of the advances in aircraft design, technology, and engineering, but mostly because of Aerospace Standard (AS) 9100. The International Quality Management System standard for the Aviation, Space, and Defense industry.

“A person would have to fly on average once a day every day for 22,000 years before they would die in a U.S. commercial airplane accident” – Dr. Arnold Barnett, FlyFright

Whether you’re an avid flyer, an aviation expert, or an aerospace supplier, join me as we fly through the following AS9100 topics:

• What is AS9100 and where on earth did it come from?
• The 5 orbital differences between AS9100 and ISO 9001
• AS9100 certification, it’s not rocket science
• AS9100 and Process Street: The sky’s the limit

Fix your seat in an upright position, fasten your seatbelt, and prepare for take-off…

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ISO means standards. A standard is just a set of requirements, decided by experts, for doing something specific.

A lot of standards exist under the banner of ISO, for all sorts of things, from quality management, to environmental and social responsibility guidelines, to how to design medical devices.

They’re useful because they help you to write good processes; how to structure, organize, implement, and improve on them.

At the heart of ISO is the principle of systematizing your approach to process management in your company – simple as that! You might be scared of ISO, but there’s really no need to be intimidated. What’s more, recent changes have made it easier than ever to get started with ISO standards.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at everything ISO, including (but not limited to):

• What is ISO? A simple introduction for normal people
• Management System Standards (MSS)
• Quick tips: How to use Process Street for ISO
• ISO & SOP (Standard Operating Procedures)
• ISO for BPM (Business Process Management)
• Continuous improvement: a central theme of ISO
• ISO templates index
• Agile ISO
• Automating ISO with Process Street
• Relevant case studies
• Further reading on ISO

Let’s start with the basics. What exactly is ISO?
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Whether it be for employee onboarding or adhering to ISO guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOP) are an integral part of making sure your company runs smoothly, stays organized, and ensuring your team consistently follows protocol.

But, where do you start if you’ve never documented your company procedures before?

It can be intimidating when you’re first beginning to build your standard operating procedures.

That’s why we’ve built four SOP example templates, to give you a clear and easy-to-follow framework to be able to easily build your own procedures from start to finish.

This post is all about SOP innovation. Using Process Street, you can create SOPs in new, more efficient ways.

Here’s a breakdown of the article:

• Get started with these SOP examples
• What’s the deal with SOPs and why are they important?
• SOP examples for process innovation
• How to use Process Street for SOP innovation
• More SOP resources

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Bread. Beer. Bacon. *Homer Simpson voice* Mmm, bacon…

No matter what tasty food product your business is creating (or helping to create), a robust food safety management system is essential.

Why?

Because without one, you could be exposing your food to risks and hazards that are both life-threatening for your consumers (420,000 people die each year due to contaminated foods), and business-destroying for you. Plus, by not having a food safety management system in place, you’ll lose pivotal trade opportunities with others in the food industry.

To ensure you have a food safety management system in place – and that it’s up to scratch – there’s FSSC 22000.

In this post, you’ll discover what FSSC 22000 actually is, why it’s so important, how a GFSI recognized certification will benefit you, and how Process Street can help with it all.

Make your way through the following sections to get clued up:

• What is FSSC 22000?
• What’s the difference?: FSSC 22000 vs ISO 22000
• What a GFSI recognized certification means for you
• The additional positives of FSSC 22000 certification
• Achieve FSSC 22000 certification with Process Street!

Now, it’s time to taco about FSSC 22000 and food safety!

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