The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has built an on-line certificate program to bring food processing professionals up to speed on food safety, processing and management. The three-module program’s intent is to give future managers essential skills and provide a background where everyone in a food plant is speaking the same language.

“The Food Processing Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has recognized our industry’s major management challenges, and it has worked with industry input to provide a solution,” says Gordon Smith, ConAgra Foods vice president. “Its online Food Processing Management Certificate Program will allow us to establish our next generation of supervisors and managers relatively easily.”

The course is broken into three modules. Module 1, “Food Safety, Quality Control/Assurance and Employee Safety, covers basic microbiology, food illness, food allergies, physical hazards, product and ingredient testing, data analysis, GMP, sourcing safe ingredients, warehousing, recalls, HACCP, GFSI, regulations, inspection and audits, food defense, allergy control, employee safety and OSHA, and more.

Module 2, Food Processing and Product Development, covers plant layout and production flow, equipment and instrumentation, unit operations, sanitary equipment, automated controls and record keeping, production scheduling, lean manufacturing practices, product concept development, ingredients, sensory analysis, packaging, product costing, scaling up/plant layout and managing proprietary information.

Module 3, Business Growth Strategies and Human Resources, covers growth strategies, market research, marketing and promotion, distribution and logistics, managing expansion of production capacity, financial planning, leadership, communication, job training, employee relations, labor views/compliance, labor scheduling, work force diversity, employee recruitment and retention and conflict resolution.

For more details on the course, on-line requirements, and fees, visit UNL’s website, Food Processing Management Certificate Program.