Food Processing Suppliers Association Annual Conference Recap
Wrapped up a trip to beautiful Tucson, AZ attending the Food Processing Suppliers Association Annual Conference. FPSA is a truly high performing organization and no surprise, this conference was productive, informative and a great event for networking with organizations at all levels of the supply chain.
One of the more powerful talks I attended was by Shawn Gregoire of Maple Leaf Foods. He hit on several points that really resonated: as the supply chain continues to be challenging, the relationships between Customers and Vendors need to be “Exceptional” to weather the ongoing turbulence. Shawn presented three main strategies to achieving this:
1) Relationships Built on Trust;
2) Creative Problem Solving Through Technical Solutions; and
3) Post Delivery Support/Responsive Uptime Support.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, and the message was validation that the values we have at MECO are aligned with the needs of the industry. I have said that we at MECO want to be seen as “Partners” with our customers, not just vendors. We strive to be “solutions engineers”, and with our custom design approach, focus on R&D, and in-field pre and post installation support we hit on all three key approaches presented by Shawn.
Finally, Shawn repeated the point that at the end of the day, we as an industry need to never lose site of the end customer – the consumer. That means hyper focus on quality and safety, and continuous improvement to efficiencies to keep costs down; after all, “food-flation” is a daily fact of life for all of us. MECO has been designing seals for the food industry for decades and has always focused on quality and efficiency. Our OFS Type-2, for example, allows for easy, speedy cleaning. The seal may be washed in 10 minutes time while assembled on the blender or freely disassembled along the shaft for cleaning and inspection.
We are here to partner with your organization in solving your sealing challenges – follow this link to see our full range of product offerings.