Concerned with SQF 2000 Auditor
I have a lot of experience with BRC and have seen many auditors of variable ability and work ethic. Some are extremely thorough arriving at 8.30 a.m. and leaving at 6.00 p.m. going through everything with a fine tooth comb finding lots of genuine nonconformities and opportunities for improvement. Some arrive at 10.00 a.m and leave at 3.00 p.m. with a nice long lunch in between. The result of both audits is usually the same e.g. a pass, but in my opinion the value of the former is infinitely higher if the company is serious about food safety and has a mindset of continuous improvement.
Of course we expect variability in everything, but such variability is concerning considering we are talking about auditors who are trained, competent and who operate to strict auditing protocols within an accreditation scheme. I accept companies would prefer the easy audit. If you are not happy complain.
Welcome to the forums.
Regards,
Simon
Unfortunately I am not in a position to complain. We spoke with the practitioners who feel let down as well. We all just kind of feel as if we worked super hard, did weekend trainings and for what? I spent hours yesterday looking and looking and looking for what was supposed to happen. Every training we had we were told the auditor will not talk to the practitioners he is going to be asking you guys, you guys have to know this stuff. That’s why I wanted to see if anyone had actually been through this type of audit before and did your auditor follow through? There was absolutely NO integrity in this audit whatsoever. Thank you for your information however beings that Wal-mart requires this certificate I doubt anyone that could complain is going to loose sleep over this, it’s unfortunate however reality.
Thank you and that is what I thought. However I can't go around saying "you didn't even audit us" if I am not sure. We were all told (including upper management) that he would be on the floor talking with employees. We are all sitting around going ???????. Have you been through an SQF Audit?
Cathy has a really good point - even though it seems like calling the police to turn yourself in - you as a company will feel more comfort in the long run that you meet the required standards.
It would be nice to hear what happens when you contact the certification body about the issue... whether or not you are put through another audit, lose certification, etc.
I think you should consider yourself fortunate (I assume level 3 is better than level 1
One BRC auditor who came to do a factory audit for me did not even know that a "Book audit" (not compulsory) had already been done !
Rgds / Charles.C
One thing to remember Heather all of the hard work you put in preparing and training all of the operators is not wasted, far from it.Simon,
Unfortunately I am not in a position to complain. We spoke with the practitioners who feel let down as well. We all just kind of feel as if we worked super hard, did weekend trainings and for what? I spent hours yesterday looking and looking and looking for what was supposed to happen. Every training we had we were told the auditor will not talk to the practitioners he is going to be asking you guys, you guys have to know this stuff. That’s why I wanted to see if anyone had actually been through this type of audit before and did your auditor follow through? There was absolutely NO integrity in this audit whatsoever. Thank you for your information however beings that Wal-mart requires this certificate I doubt anyone that could complain is going to loose sleep over this, it’s unfortunate however reality.
Yes the auditor did not check it, so you feel that you could not show your hard work, however let's remember what this is all about first and foremost which is to have an effective FSMS that produces safe food products. Your hard work no doubt has increased your ability to do this.
You can complain or at least ask the certification body to clarify the scope of the audit – you can then compare theory with fact and take it from there. By the way you are the customer in this process.
I commend your company’s attitude, if there were more like you then food would be safer.
Regards,
Simon
I completely agree that all the hard work put into preparing for these audits certainly pays off in the long run, but in the end, all you get is a piece of paper saying you passed. (Similar to a college degree except for they check up on you each year to see that you continue to apply what you learned, and if you don't they take the piece of paper away.)
In the end, money always talks - you pay all the expensive auditor fees in order to have "SQF Certified" tagged with your company name, whether or not you deserve it is at the discretion of each individual auditor.
There is a (slightly off-topic) corollary to the last few posts - do we believe that the introduction of the recent plethora of FSMS standards has / will make food safer ??
One reason for asking is that I believe the conclusion on the improvement of food "quality" following the introduction of ISO 9001 family has been negative or, perhaps more politely, unmeasurable. I remember seeing a detailed paper on this about 15 years ago and don't think I have seen any subsequent reports to the contrary.
One argument to dispute the (general) benefit of these safety schemes relates to the degree of randomness in so many causal events leading to major food incidents versus, say, events which can be ascribed to clear failures in GMP, critical points etc. (even the latter often demonstrate the significance of simple human error, practical / theoretical, whatever.)
There are undoubtedly certain well-known food safety failures whose control has been effectively achieved by applying HACCP procedures after the event but as to the preventive objective, I have yet to see any assessment of success or otherwise 30 years on. If one restricts the argument to GMP related logics perhaps the benefit is more apparent but the importance of these was, I think, already well appreciated prior to the introduction of HACCP.
@ Heather, apologies if I hv slightly hijacked yr original post, just seemed like too good an opportunity to resist.
As you can see, i have considerable reservations regarding the "validity" of auditors.
Rgds / Charles.C
To all, I was let down due to the fact that our efforts were not recognized. However my concern is that this was not a "re-certification" and without knowing the areas we need to improved, if come next year we get a picky auditor. . . we will fail.
The good thing is, you have a system in place and you should be able to identify your deficiancies by using that system so keep working and improving things. The bad thing is the person you paid to help you through this did not do their job.
You should contact someone in the CB and discuss the issues. Let them know you were dissatified and that you need an explanation. If you don't get a good explanation, you have every right to change your CB before the re-cert.
If you choose to go that path, make sure you explain to the new CB why you are changing and your concerns from the audit. A good CB will be willing to help you get back on track to get your business.
Sorry the process let you down but take it from someone that goes through several 3rd party and customer audits a year, there are good auditors out there!
The good thing is, you have a system in place and you should be able to identify your deficiancies by using that system so keep working and improving things. The bad thing is the person you paid to help you through this did not do their job.
You should contact someone in the CB and discuss the issues. Let them know you were dissatified and that you need an explanation. If you don't get a good explanation, you have every right to change your CB before the re-cert.
If you choose to go that path, make sure you explain to the new CB why you are changing and your concerns from the audit. A good CB will be willing to help you get back on track to get your business.
Sorry the process let you down but take it from someone that goes through several 3rd party and customer audits a year, there are good auditors out there!
Heather - There are good auditor's out there. Not always, but for our SQF 2000 audit level II it was a good auditor. The auditor interviewed 35 employees and really followed the audit by mapping it. So the audit was not a checklist. He found data and followed it through the process.
No matter what I can see your frustration! You should acknowledge this with the CB.
Finally, all your hard work together as a team has made your future to your goal stronger which is "continous improvement". You are proving to your workers and customers that you are on board for producing a safe product. Bravo on your committment!
The first time I was working in production and I identified what I thought was a risk of two different products containing two different food colourings being mixed up. The process meant the person receiving the batch didn't see the person making it and so had to pick from two different options on a VDU screen, however, the production IT was out of date and only had 8 letters or digits to identify the batch. Unfortunately this was not identified clearly and some products contained EU approved food dyes, whereas some where for export only (as different countries then approved different dyes. No idea if it's still the same.)
Anyway, I saw this, contacted our production IT department and our technical department; neither thought it was an issue. 3 months later we have a recall from the Middle East because the wrong colouring was used and it was picked up in laboratory tests. (I wonder how many times it had happened previously without being picked up.)
So in that case, the signs were there, I was young and less confident and so didn't push the issue (and also rushed off my feet anyway) and my olders and betters thought I didn't know what I was talking about without having the decency to visit the plant. Personally I hope I would have listened and got that production person straight onto my HACCP team!
The second occasion was when working as a Technical Manager in another company I implemented cleaning procedures based on proper, validated evidence. I then made them slightly less rigorous but proved they were still ok using careful trial techniques. I leave the company and hear through the grapevine that the production management decided after I left to get rid of that silly woman's excessive procedures and implemented their own without trial. Cue everything being put on hold due to Listeria positives in the product...
So in this case, there just wasn't the management commitment to listen to my experience (or there only was to my face when I was there
I read an article once where they were describing how accidents result from a "swiss cheese effect", ie all the little holes have to line up. I think quality incidents and recalls are the same. It requires lots of little things to have gone wrong for the incident to have happened. The key to it not ending up in a recall is reacting when you have a near miss and learning from it, either laewrning that there was a risk you were unaware of or that the FSQMS wasn't as well ingrained in the organisation as you thought...
Thks for yr interesting practical observations, pictures paint a 1000…whatever. The most obvious comment is human error (or stupidity?) often defeats the best FS intentions.
I don’t wish to pontificate but would like to add a little bit more in the hope that it has some value regarding a good / bad audit.
After installation of the FSMS, the crucial aspect perhaps should be that you are satisfied that yr system of FSMS is efficiently working for you and that it complies with the standard using a conventional checklist. I sincerely believe that most people are quite capable of effectively carrying out such a self-evaluation for themselves. As a result I regard the audit as more of an (inconvenient) challenge to obtain a piece of verificationary paper, albeit of high commercial significance with respect to potential buyers etc. Personally, I cannot recall ever having learnt much of great value from auditors at the time of the audit other than regarding the art of repartee. This is in comparison to (paid-for) “trial” audits preliminary to the actual audit which IMO are of considerable value and from which I have greatly benefited.
Rgds / Charles.C
Slightly off topic again but has anyone pointed out an issue to an auditor before as a way to get something done? I've only done this with internal auditors tbh.
Yes all the time.Slightly off topic again but has anyone pointed out an issue to an auditor before as a way to get something done? I've only done this with internal auditors tbh.
Yes, I can understand yr uncertainty however, as Simon says, you should hv some idea of how well yr system answers the requirements of the standard if it is now currently running. The usual way to approach this (before an audit
I am curious about 2 things -
(a) What products are you concerned with, RTE ?
(b) Did you validate yr prerequisites as laid out in the SQF guidance document ?
The reason for my second query relates to a parallel thread on SQF 2000 by holewinj28, eg see my post -
http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__37293
Thks and Rgds / Charles.C
The approved supplier list we provided the auditor had dead people on it LITTERALLY, the Approved item list in the register (that isn’t active or functional) does not match the made up list we put in our system. TRUST ME!!!! I prayed this auditor would rip us to pieces and we would be forced to follow our policies instead of running around duplicating efforts and looking like full blown jack bags!! However it didn’t happen.
This statement has just changed everything! Auditors are not mind readers and can only go by what they are provided. If your original statement that they spoke to one person and spent all their time in the conference room are true that is one thing. BUT In your example here, you provided the auditor with FALSE information and led them to believe that it was accurate.
Our approved supplier list was lacking when we were audited because most of our suppliers are customer driven. We "grandfathered' in suppliers based on performance and set up our new system BUT we told our auditor what was happening and did not hide anything.
An audit is a two way street that requires the auditee to open the door the whole way not just a crack. While I appreciate your situation and understand your frustration, if the auditor was misled than most of the replies in this thread are not valid!
Auditing is also your company's job as part of internal auditing. The Practitioner is responsible. I would suggest you try to put the third party audit into your past and focus your energy toward solutions to the lack of commitment to the program.
As for staying or going. Well only you can decide. I can honestly say that there isn't a single company I have worked for who shares my belief system and hasn't at some point done something I consider wrong or unethical. That said, I've worked from the inside to try and change them. My line in the sand with one company though was leaving product which contained unlabelled allergens in the marketplace. That wasn't just unethical, it was illegal. I left as soon as I could.
Yes, what your company did was wrong but many a company survived for years without an approved supplier list, there are bigger crimes. It can be difficult to convince top brass that a system is wrong without back up from an external auditor but that's what Technical Management is all about. I'd also not be too hasty to judge this QA Manager; you can't be certain without talking to them whether the poor implementation of the FSQMS is down to lack of interest from production for a start. Also this QA Manager may have had their hands tied by daily crises of recall proportions and has been unable to concentrate on the systems side (when you go into a company which is obviously in a state systems wise, the crises will follow trust me!) Before you leap, try talking to the QA Manager about your concerns, you might find an ally rather than an enemy.