Good evening all,
I´ve recently joined a company that supplies with RTE/RTD shelf-stable products and food supplements (we get our finished product direct from supplier).
For the past years the company has been relying 100% in their suppliers (all BRC certified), not getting involved in any food quality/safety control within the manufacturing sites.
As the company grows in 2018, I´ve been tasked with building a quality assurance system to ensure our product meet standards before is shipped from our supplier to our warehouse (and then picked to send to end consumer). I´m the only quality member in the company, and there is no QA system in place at all: as soon as the product is released in the factory is sent to the warehouse, we don´t check or verify anything from this point.
In my past roles I’ve been working from the ‘manufacturing side’ hence my difficulty understanding how to build a QA system from this side, the customer side.
I´m a bit lost as to what kind of documentation I should be requesting from our suppliers, having in mind they supply our finished products.
Are you supposed to trust in your suppliers just because they are BRC certified? What controls/requirements can you put in place as a customer?
Another issue I’m dealing with is our suppliers are not cooperative at all, as they´re used to handling things in their own way knowing that no quality department has ever existed in our company. Now I´ve joined the company issues have been highlighted but never been addressed showing that there´s either a communication breakdown or a problem with the QC team in the factory.
I´ve asked one of our suppliers to send us samples from the start, middle and end of production run so that I was able to conduct my own quality checks but they refused to do so saying they would only be able to send a random sample from every batch (which I think is useless as is not representative at all).
Any advice on both queries would be much appreciated!!
thank you