Any supervisor should excel at:

• Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment.
• Detecting or assessing problems whether real or potential.
• Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.

Inspectors should be great at:

• Estimating sizes, distances, and quantities; or determining time, costs, resources, or materials needed to perform a work activity.
• Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
• Identifying information by categorizing, estimating, recognizing differences or similarities, and detecting changes in circumstances or events.
• Inspecting equipment, structures, or materials to identify the cause of errors or other problems or defects.

• Staying up to date on new regulations and current events regarding food science by reviewing scientific literature.
• Testing new products for flavor, texture, color, nutritional content, and adherence to government and industry standards.
• Checking raw ingredients for maturity or stability for processing, and finished products for safety, quality, and nutritional value.
• Conferring with processing engineers, plants operators, flavor experts, and packaging and marketing specialists for resolving problems in product development.
• Evaluating food processing and storage operations and assisting in the development of quality assurance programs for such operations.
• Studying methods for improving aspects of foods, such as chemical composition, flavor, color, texture, nutritional value, and convenience.
• Studying the structure and composition of food or the changes foods undergo in storage and processing.