Thank you for replay.
Identification of all customers was always part of my forward traceability exercise. So if I'll include timescale in my report, should it be enough to cover recall/withdrawal testing?
Therfore, testing traceability looks at the method of accounting for material movements.
Product Recall testing looks at the quality of decision making, the availabilty of people in a crisis, their ability to perform their allotted tasks and the effectiveness of customer and other notifications.
Testing of Product Recall should be carried out to evaluate your ability to deal with a crisis where product safety/legality is involved. It is because these crises don't happen often that regular testing is needed so that you are not finding your way in a life or death situation (literally in some instances)
Always test your Product Recall using a challenging scenario. Don't do it just because a Standard says you have to. You will know the weak spots in your in your systems. Choose scenarios which test these weak spots.
Dear Betty,
As an auditor I like to see in a recall test that you have followed your recall procedure and that this procedure is applicable, I would like to see that the recall team knows what to do of know how to interpreted the procedure (and where to find it). Also I would like to see that the recall team is trained by doing these exercises.
IMOI it is exactly what foodworker said.
Sometimes very useful and odd corrective actions came out good conducted mock recalls. E.g. a company where I have worked found out that a conference phone was needed in the conference room. A company I have audited found out that sales men started to call there own customers with own made stories, before the decision for recall was actually made by the management.
A recall test/ mock recall is like a fire exercise. You probably never need in in real life, but you want to make sure everybody knows what to do in case of fire. It is the same with recall exercises. It is hard to do a good one and even harder to get the management involved. But the senior management is mostly the decision taker in recalls/withdrawals and therefore should be included.
Regarding the report. I prefer to see a timing for each process step in stead of timing for the whole recall exercise. E.g. incident reported on 16:05 h, recall team gathered on 17:34 h, traceability information available on 17:37 h, information about hazard impact 20:30 h etc. You can find the bottle neck in your recall process and establish corrective actions on these.
I hope this is helpful.
