Being responsible for product holds and dispositions has made Quality Assurance Managers the bearers of bad news. The fact is, food safety and quality programs are beneficial when implemented correctly. While manufacturers are rightfully focused on FSMA compliance, quality programs have been brushed aside. It’s time to bring the food quality plan back into the spotlight and change the culture at your facility. The four core programs a Food & Beverage manufacturer should have include: 1. Good Manufacturing Practices, 2. A Food Safety Plan, 3. A Food Defense Plan, and 4. A Food Quality Plan. Together these policies and procedures create a management system needed to ensure food safety, quality, and defense are maintained across the operation. The preventive systems surrounding food safety have been implemented and continuously improved at plants for many years. Shifting focus back to quality provides an opportunity to collect real time before and after data for implementing a preventive system. Participants will learn how to create meaningful quality checks that focus on understanding where and why quality issues are occurring and how to prevent and correct them. Rather than solely focusing on hold and complaint data, success criteria will be expanded to include factors affecting the bottom dollar such as, downtime, food waste, rework, and reruns. It’s important to switch the mindset of food safety and quality as just being a requirement that checks a box to being the key asset a business needs to be profitable.