Nicola Platt
Manager - Quality systems
Kraft Foods Ltd
Bachelor of Applied Science
 “My career has allowed me to work across many different areas as well as with different cultures gaining experiences in laboratory and research.”
I have worked at Kraft Foods for over 8 years during which time I have held several positions within different departments. My career at Kraft began in the microbiology group within Kraft’s Research and Development department. This role provided support to new product development as well as manufacturing sites learning about the large variety of Kraft products including Vegemite.
This role has a strong food safety influence and as such is the company expertise for HACCP and food safety. In this role I took part in auditing Kraft manufacturing sites in the Philippines, Korea and New Zealand. After 5 years in microbiology I joined the Corporate Quality team, this department looks after quality for Kraft from a corporate level setting company policies and procedures for food safety and quality. From here I was appointed as the Quality Manager at our biscuit manufacturing site. This position was a new experience as a manufacturing environment requires quick decision making and the ability to juggle many things at once!
My current position is the Manager of Supplier Quality Assurance and Auditing. The main function of this role is to ensure that all of our suppliers have the systems in place to provide us with safe, quality ingredients and packaging. This role involves auditing the suppliers at their sites and allows me to see many different manufacturing sites and processes throughout Australia and New Zealand. In addition to this I have conducted training in China and Hong Kong for other auditors in the Asia Pacific region and also have strong linkages with the Audit groups in Europe and North America. Overall my career to date has allowed me to work across many different areas as well as with different cultures gaining experiences in laboratory and research work through to applying that knowledge in manufacturing and corporate situations.
I studied Applied Biology majoring in Microbiology & Biochemistry at Monash Gippsland. The major benefit from this course was the large amount of applied laboratory work that made up the course. This allowed the students to actually have some experience in a laboratory setting to use knowledge in a practical sense. Also the final year project was a great learning experience as we were really left to ourselves to run experiments and take responsibility for the direction the project went. The broad range of subjects covered across medical, food and industrial biology allowed me to identify the areas I wanted to work in once I left university.
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