Hands-on approach to hand washing

A KTP project helps ensure a new approach to guarantee the cleanliness and quality for a full-line of food products.

KTP Associate Sophie Phanor knows the importance of getting staff on your side, so initiating a microbiology test that would assess the cleanliness of their hands would be no easy feat. To keep staff involved and to show them the benefits of hand-washing, Sophie swabbed the hands of all the staff, sampled them and then allowed the team to view the every-day micro-organisms living on their hands in a Petri dish. "I think if staff have a better understanding of why you implement some things and not others, their knowledge is increased and they can raise issues they may not have done before," explains Sophie.

The hand-sampling exercise is just one of the ways that Sophie is trying to communicate the importance of cleanliness to Ferrari staff as she embarks on her two year KTP project that has helped Ferrari achieve BRC (British Retail Consortium) accreditation and develop new products. "It is now a lot easier to make staff understand why I take a certain position on something. It is really hard to implement a new system when people are so used to doing their own thing," said Sophie.

Sophie is now focusing on creating a new quality control system and implementing it with staff. "We want to successfully achieve accreditation and implement a quality system, but not just on paper, we want it to be noticed by our customers," comments Sophie who is steadily meeting the challenges of this ambitious project. "Knowing I have to implement a system and knowing I can achieve accreditation is really exciting".

With the recent addition of a new major contract with the retail chain Debenhams, Ferrari is poised to see major growth in the near future. Kirit Patel, director of Ferrari says the KTP programme is very cost effective. "We are very pleased with the KTP programme, it is an affordable way for us to get the help we need to grow."

Building a strong relationship with the University is paramount to all projects and Sophie feels this is what helps her job be more effective. "My academic supervisors are so very supportive and we have such a valuable relationship." Mandy Maidment and Adri Bester, who gave their expertise to this project, said the staff at Ferrari have worked closely with London South Bank University to get the most out of their KTP project.