The central vision that penetrates the SPC Group in 2021 is “Quality-First Management.” SPC Magazine has met various people struggling in the field to improve the quality of our products and services. Our interviewee for the fourth episode of the “Great Food Company” series is Managing Director Lee Won-jun in the Quality Management Office at BR Korea, which was established in December last year. Let’s find out about the vision and role of Quality Management Office, which goes beyond Baskin Robbins and Dunkin’ and strives for quality-oriented thinking across the SPC Group as a whole.
Interview: Managing Director Lee Won-jun, Quality Management Office, BR Korea
BR’s Quality Management Office that supervises overall quality
Managing Director Lee Won-jun, Quality Management Office, BR Korea
Q. Could you introduce us to the BR Quality Management Office?
Nice to meet you. I am Managing Director Lee Won-jun in the Quality Management Office at BR Korea. The BR Quality Management Office was established in December last year to effectively implement the SPC Group’s management keyword for 2021, “Quality-First Management.” Previously, we managed food safety and quality individually by brand and area. After installing the Quality Management Office, we integrated the scattered teams and began to serve as a control tower that leads quality management throughout the value chain (the process by which a company adds value to its products), including planning, warehousing, production, distributing, sales, and customer service.
Inside the Quality Management Office, BR Korea
We are also primarily responsible for proactively examining and improving potential risks associated with quality safety and protecting the brand against risks in an organized manner. Building on this, we manage quality-centered execution across the corporation and lead the foundation for quality management systems that oversee BR Korea.
Q. What are the roles and strengths of each team?
The Quality Management Office consists of four teams. First, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin’ under BR Korea have their own Quality Assurance (QA) teams that integrate quality and food safety at the production stage. In particular, Baskin Robbins has been recognized for excellent quality management performance among dairy companies by HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point), FSSC22000 (Food Safety System Certification), halal certification, and organic processing certification. This year, we have been preparing Smart HACCP certification, a system that utilizes Internet of Things technology to prevent data forgery and tampering, by advancing the BSQ system that manages the quality of our production processes.
Baskin Robbins, Trusted Through Internal and External Certification
The quality management team guarantees the quality and safety of products sold at BR Korea’s over 2,300 stores. We introduce QnS hurdles from the planning stage to verify products and manage promotions and publicity materials in advance. Moreover, we visit all stores every quarter to conduct quality safety checks and training. Recently, we have been supporting the stores to obtain the sanitation grade certification from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety to encourage their autonomous management. As a result, approximately 50% of the stores have been certified, and this number will increase to 80% this year.
BR Korea store certified with sanitation grade
Finally, the CSM team responds quickly to customer complaints that may arise despite thorough pre- and post-management and promptly and directly delivers the voice of the customer (VOC) to the management strategy. In particular, we practice customer-oriented management through Consumer-Centric Management (CCM) certification and strive to maintain brand continuity as a top priority.
Quality management office: attentive to customer voices
Q. What are the major issues of the BR Quality Management Office today?
Because we are an organization established to effectively implement “Quality-First Management,” problems regarding this subject are the biggest issues. Specifically, we are wondering how all departments at BR Korea can focus on flavor-based, quality-driven thinking. As the solution, we are developing quality management processes and promoting corporate quality management campaigns. Also, we organize monthly quality management meetings. We examine the current key quality management indicators and discuss the direction of improvement to reflect them in practice. In addition, the project to improve the taste of our iconic products is the central challenge of the year. We are concentrating on achieving successful results on that.
Meetings about Quality-First Management
Q. How are you responding to CS, customer data, and customer support systems, which are considered more important nowadays?
Every voice of customers has a clear reason, and each one is a valuable opinion. All customer and store input received through the VOC system are aggregated and managed, and feedback is systematically and quickly implemented through organic communication and collaboration. Integrated data management is critical to responding to the rapidly changing needs of consumers and becoming a beloved brand. We are enhancing our services to reflect consumer-centric views and actively working on how to implement them more specifically in the future.
Staff carefully monitoring the voices of customers
We also share the voice of our customers with the employees through regular analysis. In addition to the basic business principles, it serves as an important indicator to keep in mind as we provide consumers with the highest quality and satisfaction. To ensure that our brands are loved and continue to advance, we cherish all opinions, even those that seem trivial. We hope our heartfelt sincerity is conveyed to the customers who use our brands.
The vision of quality, by quality, for quality
Q. What is the impact of the BR Quality Management Office on the SPC Group?
The Quality Management Office is a recently established organization compared to similar organizations of our affiliates. Therefore, we wished to benchmark as many of the advantages of other affiliates as possible. Because we are a new organization, I believe we are able to function more flexibly, which helps us play our part. In particular, since BR Korea is based on global brands such as Baskin Robbins and Dunkin, we can play a proactive role in advancing SPC Group’s food safety and quality to the global level. In fact, SPC Food Safety Requirement (FSR), which is being planned since last year, is benchmarking the global food safety management standards introduced by BR Korea in 2015. By openly sharing the trials and errors we’ve experienced with the SPC Group, we are helping the SPC FSR standards to be established immediately within the group.
Commitment to Quality-First Management
Q. I am curious about your core vision and plans regarding the 2021 management keyword, “Quality-First Management.”
I think the quality is the“value of the product that customers recognize.” A company-wide empathy for “quality-first” will be essential to providing products and services that meet the values expected by our customers. At the BR Quality Management Office, we will establish a quality management system and focus on creating a culture where quality is at the center of our organization and is the basis for decision-making.
Holding a meeting on product quality
To this end, we aim to maximize quality management performance by leading the company’s quality management campaign. Next, we plan to strengthen the quality mindset enhancement support for all employees and focus on securing and fostering expert capacity. Third, we will advance our quality management and fully establish systematic quality management. Finally, we will continue to improve brand credibility by obtaining more internal and external quality certifications and building a mid-term quality roadmap. If these goals are executed as planned in the field and conveyed in the quality that consumers perceive, our brands will always be market leaders.
Through this interview with Managing Director Lee Won-jun, we looked into how the Quality Management Office defines the meaning of “quality” as the “value of products that customers recognize” and strives to prioritize the joy of our customers. He was enthusiastic about providing the best quality, from the SPC Group’s products purchased and used to the services that are invisible to the eye. In line with the vision of the Quality Management Office, the entire SPC Group vows to deliberate and exchange views with quality as our top priority. In the end, we will endeavor to provide customers with the best experience that cannot be satisfied anywhere else.
