Journal of Tea Science Research. 2015, Vol. 5, No. 6, 1-14
5
In-depth site analysis were carried out factories were
evaluated based on the visual observations,
documentary evidences, in-depth structured interviews
and unstructured discussions for all the 45 factories
audited where stage I gap analysis was based on
GMP compliance at the time of evaluation, while
stage II internal audits were focus on the compliance
of GMP with HACCP or ISO 22000 system
requirements. The unstructured interviews were
mostly used to gain additional insights of the
organizations and their role in the industry as well as
anecdotal information about real food safety
practices. All the factories were evaluated against
GMP since it is the basic level of registering a food
manufacturing facility in the country as stipulated by
the Sri Lanka Food Act no 26 of 1980. The
compliance to GMP was weighted averaged to
consider the real impact on each and every
component of the GMP can provide for the basic
food hygiene to be met by food manufacturers.
According to the evaluation of first stage and second
stage results, the 5S implementation in tea industry
and practices were very identical and sustaining
where additional focus was given to understand best
practices as well as to capture them over the auditing
activities. Bearing in mind the importance of 5S in
tea industry, the system development was focused to
absorb 5S into ISO 22000 food safety system
development work. Thus existing 5S systems and
practices were thoroughly studied and best practices
were captured with a digital camera. 5S related
literature was collected and analyzed to develop 5S
based ground level documents which workers easily
understands, where published literature was very
important.
The system development initiative was based on the
human involvement, processes, tools and technology.
Thus development process focused on integrated
requirements of both ISO 22000 and 5S while
considering changes in the currently adapted systems,
processes, practices, and adaptation to design
synergetic technical solutions. Incorporation of
designed changes to improve the documentation
system had to be defined with the comparison of
design elements and management requirements
while discussing with management as well as the
operators to validate the application by changing
design to match with user requirements. The policies
and procedures as well as available literature related
to food safety management system were reviewed to
improve the functionality of the food safety
management systems in the organization. The new
changes required adaptation, where training required
as well as responsibilities were also considered. The
information available as well as existing ISO 22000
and 5S document management systems were analyzed
for the identification of gaps between the requirements
of the organization (in terms of document management)
and the functionalities of its existing systems.
Further considerations were given to the duplication
of information as well as the document management
strengths that can be used to promote the proper
management of documents through the analysis of
context of organization with regards to the activities
and transactions of the organization in the business
processes.
Results and Discussion
In pursuit of finding best practices of the tea
industry to develop of a ISO 22000:2005 generic
model to utilize in tea manufacturing process; the
research found most of the tea factories evaluated
for the objective has implemented Japanese 5S
(Figure 1) to cut down the waste and to improve the
productivity. On the other hand, over 75% of the
workers interviewed from the factory floor levels
had basic understanding of the 5S methodology
while they had participated for implementation of
the 5S system in their working place or in a previous
working place. According to the figure 01, over 50%
of them had some kind of 5S training in their
working environments as they explained to the
question of what kind of trainings they had. The
activity was greatly influenced by the Sri Lanka Tea
Board’s star factory grading system which was
abandoned after very successful implementation of
few years, where the 1
st
star was given for very
successful implementation of 5S methodologies.
Although the implemented systems were mostly
concentrated on visual representation of various
kinds of sign boards, instructions and praises;
efficient auditable systems were seen in very few
