Measuring effectiveness of food quality management in the bakery sector

Inappropriate management of food production operations cause several quality performance problems. Therefore, the actual contribution of food quality management to quality performance has to be revealed. This article investigates the effectiveness of food quality management in the bakery sector. Relations between production quality, quality management and contextual factors were studied from a generic and a specific point of view. On the generic level, performance of quality management was related to contextual factors, i.e. complexity of organisation, production process, and product assortment. Assessment on the specific level revealed that effective quality management activities in the bakery sector were (1) control of strategy, (2) allocation of supplying raw materials, (3) supply control, (4) control of production, (5) control of execution of production tasks, (6) control of receiving orders, and (7) planning of distribution. These quality management activities were effective, since interdependency was found between a higher level of these activities and a higher score for specific indicators for production quality, i.e. higher results of legislative and technical evaluations, a lower percentage of rejected products, and lower percentages of complaints about product quality and availability. Each bakery has a different set of contextual factors such as type of QA systems, size of company, degree of automation, and product assortment. Depending on these differences in context, bakeries should select and implement specific quality management activities suitable to their situation to increase their production quality.