The role and the significance of quality management in the domestic poultry-processing enterprises

Abstract

Hungary’s food-industry plays an important part in the production of ample domestic food supply, as well as in providing balance in foreignmarkets and maintaining attraction of manpower in the country. Stepping over to the third millenia, the participants of the domestic economy were supposed to face numerous new challenges. Joining the European Union, as well as the liberalization of world trade have considerably contributed to the changes in economic and social conditions of food production and consumption. To be able to meet the requirements on the global market, a company needs complex, up-to-date management-systems and methods which enable it to sense the changes of expectations on the market in time and also to be properly flexible to react as soon as possible. A company should be able to manage the expected quality, in line with time, costs, environmental and safety factors. A company is expected to be on the right place, in the right time with products or services bearing considerable added value and complying with the requirements, moreover it should not be more expensive nor require more resources than that of the competitors’. Nowadays,most managements recognise that the improvement of management-systems and methods is an economic pressure, fundamental for survival.They need management principles and methodology that improve the skills of keeping up with the fast and regular changes of economic surroundings, and adapting to them. In this competition, the winner is that organization which is faster and better in adapting and is able to accept and wittingly apply continuous changes and the necessity of changes. Public opinion in Hungary had been for a long time that the production of safe food articles had been completely solved, although the manufacturing and trade of safe food products set remarkable tasks to all parties of the food-chain even in the wealthiest countries. In the last years, we have heard some news about official provisions taken because of either illnesses of food origin, or because of trade with decayed, counterfeit food products (pepper scandal,mushroom toxication, salmonellosis, etc.).We had to recognize that there are some problems with the domestic food-industry. After joining the European Union, for the whole Hungarian food-industry the crucial question is whether it is capable of keeping its markets, whether it manages to establish and to achieve the strategy of entering into new, profitable market segments. The essential object of my academic research was to familiarize deeper with parties of food-industry, within that with poultry processing industry and to reveal the adaptablility of poultry processing industry to changing market requirements. In order to achieve this, I have examined how companies are able to come up to the expectations related to quality, environmental protection and safety beyond complying with the basic food-production requirements.