Environmental Monitoring and Mapping Application (emma®)

By Food Safety Net Services

Environmental monitoring programs (EMPs) are critical in food processing environments to ensure the prevention and detection of pathogens. Many of these programs have evolved to mitigate risk of contamination and can serve as an early warning sign of risk to food products. Many times, EMPs are a large undertaking and require constant vigilance and review in order to be effective. Knowing where your high-risk areas are located can help with a targeted approach to sanitation and an understanding of what risk your environment poses to the products that are produced. Analyzing the data produced through the EMP will ensure critical information of the modes of operating and are key to producing wholesome food products.

FSNS developed a software solution called emma® to effectively and efficiently manage EMPs. This powerful application allows for plants to map diagrams and place unique sample points to enhance results of swabs with real-time data. Users can easily visualize pass (green) and fail (red) sites on the map with a variety of filters to better understand performance over time. This software allows for source tracking with our playback mode, which displays data as green or red over each day in a finite period. Emma gives your organization the power to visualize your EMP with a user-friendly interface.

The emma system offers key features such as a single-entry point and dashboard via FSNet. The dashboard includes all your results, pass and fail points, and remediation data. There is unlimited user access and customizable permissions for your organization. Emma allows for electronic submission of both quantitative and qualitative testing that links directly to FSNS’ LIMS system. The data populates seamlessly based on user-defined specs. Emma will enhance your EMP management with customizable plans that randomly generate your swab sites to easily manage the swab frequency requirements of your program without the use of spreadsheets.

Emma allows food plants to automate their EMP, which in turn saves time and money. Users can easily print detailed labels, collect the swab samples and then electronically submit to our LIMS system. This expedites management of the swabbing program, and saves time and labor with great automation. All data, tasks and scheduling are securely online with quicker employee training and transition. The data is segmented and easy to collect for attributes such as sample point names, zone, rooms and customizable categories. The data can then be easily retrieved and further analyzed with our AdHoc report feature.

Emma also offers remediation management of failed sites and easy creation of vector sites. The users will be alerted to a fail site and corrective action can be documented easily in one place. This allows for organizations to easily pull critical corrective action information for comparison and resolution. Emma will soon allow for automatic vector creation for each fail site with our new feature coming in Fall 2021. This powerful tool will ensure that vector swabs are taken and there is no limit to uploading supporting documents.

If you are ready to take your EMP to the next level, please contact us about implementing emma in your organization. You’ll experience the effectiveness and efficiency it has to offer.