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Supplier evaluation techniques regarding second party audits

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MJOAOCARDOSO

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Posted 16 June 2017 - 08:33 AM

The company where I work has procedures for supplier evaluation.

Even suppliers that have GFSI certification can be sujected to audits.

We have second party audits and we accompany them

As it is quite costly we do a one day audit based on BRC checklist; as our purpose is to know what is NC so that we can work on that. we firstly do a surveillance on the suplier, a verification of RASFF, FDA databases, etc and do a risk evaluation.

Last year we had full audits done, with conformance and NC being reported and we found out that it wasnt so adequate,as this year we audited some of the same companies and decided to look for NC instead of C and NC. We came across situations that we didnt discover when doing a full audit.

 

The auditor was fully trainned in auditing GFSI systems and he checked all the points,but did not lose time recording them on our report, although I also recorded some findings.

 

The BRC does not impose conformance, correct? There must be evidence that the points regarding food Safety that are checked? Is there a better way to be able to comply with the standard and, at the same time, have a good job done?

Thanks for your help!

Kind regards



MJOAOCARDOSO

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Posted 16 June 2017 - 08:34 AM

Just for clarification,my name is Maria, my name can be less clarifying :)



Charles.C

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Posted 17 June 2017 - 06:16 AM

The company where I work has procedures for supplier evaluation.

Even suppliers that have GFSI certification can be sujected to audits.

We have second party audits and we accompany them

As it is quite costly we do a one day audit based on BRC checklist; as our purpose is to know what is NC so that we can work on that. we firstly do a surveillance on the suplier, a verification of RASFF, FDA databases, etc and do a risk evaluation.

Last year we had full audits done, with conformance and NC being reported and we found out that it wasnt so adequate,as this year we audited some of the same companies and decided to look for NC instead of C and NC. We came across situations that we didnt discover when doing a full audit.

 

The auditor was fully trainned in auditing GFSI systems and he checked all the points,but did not lose time recording them on our report, although I also recorded some findings.

 

The BRC does not impose conformance, correct? There must be evidence that the points regarding food Safety that are checked? Is there a better way to be able to comply with the standard and, at the same time, have a good job done?

Thanks for your help!

Kind regards

 

Hi Maria,

 

You may need to supply a little more context, eg which specific part of yr current survey procedure is causing you problems ?

 

afaik BRC specifies the general scope of the supplier audit  within section 3.5 -

 

The company shall have an effective supplier approval and monitoring system to ensure that any potential risks from raw materials (including packaging) to the safety, authenticity, legality and quality of the final product are understood and managed.

 

And, more specifically, but not exclusively -

 supplier audits, with a scope to include product safety, traceability, HACCP review and good manufacturing practices, undertaken by an experienced and demonstrably competent product safety auditor.

 

The survey should presumably verify that the supplier's  interpretation of the above BRC supplier features are in conformance with appropriate/relevant clauses of the BRC standard. i expect that some auditor's simply select out such clauses in the BRC Standard for direct testing. Other auditors may have a more generic checklist but which they have confimed includes the minimum BRC requirements.

 

From a purely safety POV, the "intensity" required of a survey is logically also related to the risk associated with the raw material in the subsequent receiver's process. Notably where a potential hazard may occur in the supplied raw material which will not be able to be removed by the receiver/receiver's haccp plan or the ultimate consumer.

 

For example a cooked "raw material" which will not receive any further heat treatment by receiver/consumer is clearly a more "sensitive" microbiological raw material than one which will subsequently be fully cooked before consumption. (although both items should nonetheless comply with their raw material specifications).

 

Not sure if the above helps or not to answer yr query ? IMEX supplier audits are a mixture of "Art and Science".


Kind Regards,

 

Charles.C


MJOAOCARDOSO

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Posted 19 June 2017 - 01:34 PM

Hi Charles, 

 

Thanks for your POV.

Before arranging the supplier audits we took into consideration the "sensitivity" of the product and supllier.

We discussed the checklist that should be done during the audit and the auditor checked all the points regarding product safety, traceability, HACCP review and good manufacturing practices

The only points that were not recorded in the final report were the points of conformance and data regarding the documents, records,etc that were evaluated during the audit.

In terms of someone (out of context) reading the report, they should have some difficulty in understanding what was actually evaluated.

The purpose of our audits were, besides trying to comply with the BRC standard, managing to raise some important points (non conformances), that should be dealt with and corrected.

The cope was actually going across all the BRC points,with emphasis to the ones indicated above, but only to record what was actually wrong. 

 

We did not want to "lose" time recording what was ok,so that we were totally paying attention to what could be a risk and what could be corrected.

Did I manage to explain this better?

Thanks

Regards

Maria



Charles.C

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Posted 19 June 2017 - 02:57 PM

Hi Maria,

 

Thks. Yes, 2nd post is more clear.

 

As I'm sure you realise, the 4 BRC "red" requirements actually necessitate a further self-"interpretation" as to final scope of the supplier audit, eg what constitutes "product safety". IMEX the ultimate scope conclusions can be rather variable according to the specific nature of the business under audit, eg a flavouring ingredient is a rather different situation to a whole fish although both may be "Low Risk"..

 

Yr overall procedure sounds quite similar to my own. I nonetheless have no doubt that both our methods can be improved (somehow) however "time" is a hard master. There is a popular English Engineering idiom - If it ain't broke , don't fix it !

 

Other posters may have different approaches of course ??


Kind Regards,

 

Charles.C


MJOAOCARDOSO

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Posted 19 June 2017 - 03:04 PM

Hi Charles,

 

Thanks again.

Not only time but number of suppliers.

It can be up to 70 being evaluated and it can be quite expensive when you have 2 days audit and not only one.

As I acompanied the auditor I also had a general idea of what was right. I didnt record it either and that was not so good for us (company) when we were having our BRC audit. Although being extremely important to have an idea of the actual non conformances,we should have recorded what was conformant(with that i dont actually agree), but I agree that maybe we could have recorded some of the evidences that we came across duting all the evaluations.

Reg.

Maria





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