CAN YOU DO A PRODUCT BETTER AND CHEAPER

THINKING ABOUT WHETHER DOES SOMEBODY CAN DO THE SAME PRODUCT BETTER AND CHEAPER?

Today is the time to think about the products that we supply to our market – which are for me SPICES and DRIED FRUITS &NUTS – can there be done better and cheaper?

As a producer ...Are we supplying at least a decent quality of products?This means that you would love to bring your products home and serve to your chidren whom we are caring most? From my side I can say easily yes but when its comes all the foodstuffs we buy from the nearby grocery stores are not equal quality wise.

It is very probable that you can come across with a much cheaper pasta for instance . What is the quality difference between the most expensive one. What we should be   buying. Is the cheapest one the same product?

We won’t die from cheapest pasta. We will quench our hunger from both. Will the taste and texture be same ? Surely not.. Does it matter? For some yes…For some not. Hence we can come into a conclusion there is not much difference -in quality- based on our sensory perception wise…

Pasta is a quite simple product.. when it comes to more sophisticated products the risks are growing.
Canned products need more attention. Fish and meet are at the top of the list.Diary products maybe even more sensitive.

McDonalds or Burger King “must” offer you the best meat as they are not able to dare to a tiniest complaint which can deteriorate their world wide reputation . While your butcher in your neighborhood is not exposed to a such a big responsability. If you did not like the meat you bought last week you can complain to him but only the clients in the shop will hear it by chance. This will affect very slightly the business of your butcher. Right ?

Famous brands are and have to be more and more quality orianted than pricing. This does not prove that their quality is perfect. Some chemical and medicinal researches takes very very long time. Needs maybe more sofisticated analytical machinery to be invented.

Products without any brand have almost no risk. But can only sell with an attractive price. This is causing a dillemma price against quality.

The task of the legislator is more difficult. How to materilize the flow of decent products into the market without interruption? Not everybody is an expert of what we buy as food.Hence a neutral comitee must check but moreover think about public health .

Regretfully safety is endless notion. Achiveable precautions must be compulsory but in a reasonable extent. But NOT social media or uncompetent legislator must poke his nose into it.

Avram Aji
28.11.2017

IS THE PROFIT THE SURPLUS STOLEN FROM OUR WORKERS AS SAID BY KARL MARX

Peter Drucker is saying that it is not. Moreover this is the only way for the workers to make a living. The theory of economic growth is showing that only innovators but nobody else can obtain a profit.

An innovator is person that take a risk. Spending his valuable time to think about how to improve the existing commerce or production he already has, or to look after something more valuable to the world in near future..

Especially nowadays the knowledge is playing a big role in our world. Expensive researchs can only be made by very rich mutinational companies . Who can invest 500 million dollars to send a rocket to the the sky and trying make it return for the re-usage?

Governmental organisations can not dare , as they dont have the  luxuary to fail. But a mutibillionnaire can. If SpaceX or Hyperloop projects fails nobody will sue Elon Musk for it. He  is not doing them for presidential expectation too.

Big datas accumulated at the internet is conveying us on how to process them which is becoming the most important business of today. Google is saying that now able to identify the tiniest epidemic . Hence such a research and innovation-although must have be done by our authorities -due to the fact that they dont have the resources and allowance to fail ,research and innovation work is conveyed to entrepreneurs... Do not demonize them or invent a conspiracy story for every singe evil in the world.

Avram Aji
19.11.2017

IDENTIFYING THE FUTURE - Comments over Peter Drucker views (1)

I started to read the book of the most valuable guru of management  in 21. century Peter Drucker where I have been asked to identify the new trends of the field we work as homework.

I took the courage to think about how our food manufacturing company will continue to exist and what will be the management system in the near future.

My son and myself had had many difficuties in managing the small food production company we own. Every single worker , regardless he or she is white or blue collar have his own way of seeing the world , the factory , the business , his or her co-workers and ourselves as the owner of the business. Needless to say this is making very difficult to install a rigid discipline in all senses. Starting from they wear up to obeying the managerial and behaving individually differently.

I have come accross to a very few people who is eager to learn something and to look after on how to contribute to the existing system , on how to improve our existing production. Although we did not put in place a hierarchy in the management system ,old workers behave as having more authority and knowledge -which is not mostly the case- putting pressure on newcomers..

We have two major progress in our field. Mechanization is the first one. Unsophisticated hand work is becoming very expensive and the legislation of labor safety is becoming so impracticable  or if you follow strictly , is becoming so difficult to fulfill than as a manager you start thinking for mechanization every single day. The second major change is that the young workers do not want to work in physically hard jobs such as carrying heavy things , noisy , dusty  and cold environment.

Food legislation is becoming more and more difficult to implement to the manufacturer like us. The view of the legislator is to put restriction to every tiny issue to improve public health care without considering its costs and without making the risk analysis against the benefit .

They have a cruel and pitiless social media network and press… There is no any control , more over penalty and pay off for incorrect , inaccurate news that we are receiving daily basis.Hence , for the legislator put control on it is the safest way to react.

To conclude I can say that there will less available workers in the for difficult jobs which will push us to mechanization more and more. We will be obliged to spend more time and money to follow up the legislation and to implement . Staff working  such fields in the factories will increase either under the name of quality control manager or human resource manager or production manager.

Investment in modern technology will speed up.

We have been always badly affected from illegal competition whom are finding  a way to jump over the legislation. The major duty of our authorities was and must be to prevent their existance.

I have serious  doubts on it.

Avram Aji

17.11.2017

RISK ANALYSIS IN FOOD VERSUS QUALITY MANAGEMENT

BRC , IFS , FSSC , ISO quality management systems indeed have many advantages to produce safe and reliable products . But quality auditors do  not categorize neither give priority to the risks. This is giving unnecessary labor and waste of time and money to all companies.

For instance WHO is assuming that max 7mm metal is not dangerous for men if swallowed.. Children often swallow cherry pits which is not given any nuisance and trouble. On the other hand we are installing 0,7 mm sensible metal detector , neodium boron 8000 gauss magnets to get rid of fine metal powder, X-Ray detectors . Beside the expenses done to buy you also have to calibrate all the time and certify the calibration.

1-2 mm stone in the product can hurt your teeth. But you do not die of it. Pesticide residues indeed have negative impact in human body in long term. You can not consume 1 Kg of spice in a year but 1 kg of bread in a day.

On the other hand salmonella and e-coli contamination or growth in the product may be fatal instantly.

The calibration of glassware of laboratories must be done once for life time , as glass is an inert material. Calibration of scales is good for the trade but has nothing to do with health risk.

The importance of Major and minor non –conformance do not have the same magnitude .

The classification of risks must be categorized as follows

GRADE 1   -FATAL

GRADE 2   -LONG TERM SPREAD

GRADE 3   -NO EFFECT

Non conformances must be rated accordingly.

For instance if you don’t have microbiological analysis done the non conformance rating must be more severe than if you haven’t calibrate your scale. And the ratio must be 1 to 10 at least if not 100.

At the present time allergens are an insolvent disease issue. But the occurrence is so scattered and diverse!  On the other hand the preventive efforts spent for contamination is huge. But regarded as fatal for some auditors.  I do not want to give the impression that allergen management, labelling is unimportant for me but cost benefit analysis must be done also for rating.

All companies have a limited budget for the improvement of the product and production. Hence Grade 1 conformity must be %100 while Grade 3 conformity may be overlooked  in some extent.

Avram Aji

01.11.2017

Ray Kruzweil - THE SINGULARITY IS NEAR

I regret that I have been only informed about this magnificent book only in September 2017. Nearly 12 years later after being published.. Kruzweil is an incredible futurist  and researcher. Here I am copying you  the most important sentences that I selected for you.

“Our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today”

“We currently understand the speed of light as a bounding factor on the transfer of information.”

“machines can share their knowledge at extremely high speed, compared to the very slow speed of human knowledge-sharing through language”

“Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence. This is the destiny of the universe. (See chapter 6.) We will determine our own fate rather than have it determined by the current "dumb," simple, machinelike forces that rule celestial mechanics.”

“In biological evolution the overall problem has always been to survive. In particular ecological niches this overriding challenge translates into more specific objectives, such as the ability of certain species to survive in extreme environments or to camouflage themselves from predators. As biological evolution moved toward humanoids, the objective itself evolved to the ability to outthink adversaries and to manipulate the environment accordingly.”

“There are only eight hundred million bytes of information in the entire human genome, and only about thirty to one hundred million bytes after data compression is applied.”

“Fredkin believes that the universe is very literally a computer and that it is being used by someone, or something, to solve a problem. It sounds like a good-news/bad-news joke: the good news is that our lives have purpose; the bas news is that their purpose is to help some remote hacker estimate pi to nine jillion decimal places.”

“An evolutionary algorithm can start with randomly generated potential solutions to a problem, which are encoded in a digital genetic code.”

“Once a computer achieves a human level of intelligence, it will necessarily soar past it. A key advantage of nonbiological intelligence is that machines can easily share their knowledge. If you learn French or read War and Peace, you can't readily download that learning to me, as I have to acquire that scholarship the same painstaking way that you did. I can't (yet) quickly access or transmit your knowledge, which is embedded in a vast pattern of neurotransmitter concentrations (levels of chemicals in the synapses that allow one neuron to influence another) and interneuronal connections (portions of the neurons called axons and dendrites that connect neurons).”

“The most compelling scenario for mastering the software of intelligence is to tap directly into the blueprint of the best example we can get our hands on of an intelligent process: the human brain. Although it took its original "designer" (evolution) several billion years to develop the brain, it's readily available to us, protected by a skull but with the r“ight tools not hidden from our view. Its contents are not yet copyrighted or patented.”

 “The pace of building working models and simulations is only slightly behind the availability of brain-scanning and neuron-structure information. There are more than fifty thousand neuroscientists in the world, writing articles for more than three hundred journals.11 The field is broad and diverse, with scientists and engineers creating new scanning and sensing technologies and developing models and theories at many levels.”

“The brain gets its resilience from being a deeply connected network in which information has many ways of navigating from one point to another..

“You create your brain from the input you get.”

“It may be 'natural,' but I don't see anything positive in losing my mental agility, sensory acuity, physical limberness, sexual desire, or any other human ability. I view disease and death at any age as a calamity, as problems to be overcome.”

“Nature shows that molecules can serve as machines because living things work by means of such machinery. Enzymes are molecular machines that make, break, and rearrange the bonds holding other molecules together. Muscles are driven by molecular machines that haul fibers past one another. DNA serves as a data-storage system, transmitting digital instructions to molecular machines, the ribosomes, that manufacture protein molecules. And these protein molecules, in turn, make up most of the molecular machinery.”

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”

“Because computers can merge together instantly. Ten computers—or one million computers—can become one faster, bigger computer. As humans, we can't do that. We each have a distinct individuality that cannot be bridged.”

“The ongoing acceleration of many intertwined technologies produces roads paved with gold. (I use the plural here because technology is clearly not a single path.) In a competitive envi”
“ronment it is an economic imperative to go down these roads. Relinquishing technological advancement would be economic suicide for individuals, companies, and nations.”

“Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive, economically rich society”

“Extensive studies have shown that this grain, as well as many other genetically modified organisms (GMOs), is safe. For example, in 2001 the European Commission released eighty-one studies that concluded that GMOs have "not shown any new risks to human health or the environment, beyond the usual uncertainties of conventional plant breeding. Indeed, the use of more precise technology and the greater regulatory scrutiny probably make them even safer than conventional plants and foods."39”

“Another concern expressed by Jaron Lanier and others is the "terrifying" possibility that through these technologies the rich may gain certain advantages and opportunities to which the rest of humankind does not have access.39”

“Drugs are essentially an information technology, and we see the same doubling of price-performance each year as we do with other forms of information technology”

“y. In the second decade of “this century, we will routinely be interacting with virtual humans that, although not yet Turing-test capable, will have sufficient natural language understanding to act as our personal assistants for a wide range of tasks

“evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater love.”

“Emulating the ideas of nature is the most effective way to harness the enormous powers that future technology will make available.”

01

HOW THE RESEARCH ACTIVITIES WILL GO ON

Research in every field requires time , expertise and money .

From that point of view we can estimate in coming decades where new inventions will come out. Today the most succesfull universities are in UK , USA and Europe , moreover the world biggest capital accumulation are in these countries too. Hence technological breakthroughs can only be expected to be done there. Expertise is at sophisticated universities and multinational companies. Strong justice is needed to protect investors for patents and also company shareholders. A stock exchange open worldwide and conducted well to prevent manipulations.

Today coming out into the market place by just saying that I will do research in suchand such  field is enough to collect billions of dollars as seen Elon Musk new companies.

The only thing you need is spend time to imagine the future .

“Ford” has said that if I would have ask to people what to invent they would have request a better running horse!!

Also I love the aphorism “ electrical light did not come out from the continuous  improvments of the candles” of Oren Harari.

Technology is gallopping. Ray Kruzwel has demonstrated that the breakthroughs in most fields are growing exponantially.Putin has said recently that in near future those who have the best   Artificial Intelligence will dominate the world…

Today is time to spend a little bit of time in writing a science fiction article at the field you work or you have interest.

Dont restrict your mind and imagination about money , as for a good idea investors are ready.

Avram Aji
20.09.2017

GOING BEYOND NECESSARY CLEANNESS IN FOOD

I have been visited and audited in some way my spice production facility by meticulous purchasing manager and quality manager. The spice cleaning consists of the  following machines : sieves, gravity separators, indent separators ( segragation by the shape) . In the line there are many magnets too.
At the very end there is a metal detector of 2mm sensitivity . The purchasing manager commented that in some factories there are vertical metal detection with 0,7 mm sensitivity. This is true. This has been invented already. Time to time we are sendinging to sub-contractor for such segregation. Normally in 10 tons of spice you get 5-10 pieces of foreign matters -mostly consisting of alumina folyo pieces- coming from cigarette packaging. But in I would like draw your attention to the quantity scanned : 10 tons. And segragated particles 1-3 grams.

By no means anything havier – with higher density – is segragated in the gravity separators with works with blowing air suspention system. Very powerful magnets produced by Neon-Boron with 8000 gauss attracting power are already in the line segragated even magnetised spice flakes by friction.

Anything with lighter density is already carried out by air suction.

At the end indeed you “may”  get a cleaner (!) product but at the expense of quite complicated machinary to segregate % 0,0001 innoxious foreign matters. Instead of focusing ourselves into more fundamental issues we are waisting our time and money .

Another discussions was made at the same encounter. We have a good amount of trees and flower plants in the surrounding of our factory. The visitor has congratulated me for having such a green environment . I replied that these are what  escaped from our Quality Manager extermination plan. As according to the up-to-date Quality Assurrance Systems no plants are requested  nearby as they can habour pests.

What a contradiction!

Avram Aji