42 replies to this topic

[YongYM]

beata81:

I faced this situation before. What I did was: I sent one example/page of process flow, one page of product description, hazard analysis (for raw material, packaging material and process), HACCP Plan summary etc to the customer. [One example each and labelled as : "SAMPLE/EXAMPLE"]. If they want more, I will invite them to audit our plant. and then I will show them the whole things.

May be you can try this out.


Yong

[Tony-C]

If they want more, I will invite them to audit our plant. and then I will show them the whole things.
May be you can try this out.
Yong

For some people a trip to Malaysia may be quite a trip to get a few documents, although it may be good for fitting in a holiday as well

[cazyncymru]

For some people a trip to Malaysia may be quite a trip to get a few documents, although it may be good for fitting in a holiday as well

MMMM i managed to wangle a trip to India on this basis!!!! ;O)

[Tony-C]

MMMM i managed to wangle a trip to India on this basis!!!! ;O)

Yes a few spring to mind but certainly the best trip I've had was to Canada - Toronto and Montreal - both great places and the Canadians were so friendly

Edited by Tony-C, 05 January 2011 - 08:42 PM.

[GMO]

Best audit location I've had was North Wales. I need to change companies.

[cazyncymru]

Best audit location I've had was North Wales. I need to change companies.

LOL i've also had the dubious luxury of auditing a storage facility in Felixstow docks.
Biggest pest problem they had was feral cats......kept the rats away i suppose!

[fstRicky]

From Supplier Questionnaires to trips - I love this! I need a trip!! Need to push for an overseas supplier - somewhere in Kenya!!

Otherwise a very enlightening discussion - I was in the middle of sending out a questionnaires but will now have to modify it and make it simple. After all if a company is certified by a recognized Auditing body - one would "expect" them to meet the minimum standard.

R

[jorgeoaleman]

I feel your pain. This is very time consuming and borders on the line of "sharing company intellectual property." I offer our customers a Letter of Guarantee which depicts all pertinents (and frequently asked for) regulations as well as a basic overview of our HACCP systems including what CCPs/Interventions we have in place. As for saving time I, myself, will be taking the advice of a previous post and have my own "blanket" Questionnaire with most frequently asked question to provide, which should suffice for most.

Jorge

[esquef]

This is becoming more and more commonplace IME (some call them "answernaires" lol).

[GMO]

There would be a big benefit to someone like BRC or ISO setting up an online SAQ system. They could charge companies a yearly access charge but then there would be one SAQ which is a format which is applicable to all GFSI audits... Wouldn't that be great? Reduce workload for companies so surely they'd be prepared to pay for it?

I should go into business.

[DocGra]

Hello Ms Betty

Hmmm … good question: to supply or not.

I'm a TM and get those sorts of requests too. About 10 so far this year and I guess perhaps 30 a year - but not all of them are so painfull.

I usually talk to the commercial folks and see how big their order volumes are, I also check back to see if they returned the 'I agree' bits when they requested our product specifications (which in my mind are also close to the intellectual property line too - more detail than on the label anyway), if they did, well then at least they read what we sent …

I have parts & summaries of our HACCP prepared as pdf files togetherwith a set of certificates and policies. I usually pick an appropriateselection and send them off in a tracked email along with a 'sign and returnthis to acknowledge the confidential / commercial nature of the enclosed' form- but only if I'm satisfied with the checks above.

What I really hate are those questionnaires you get when notonly do they want all your documents - but they also want you to fill in everysection of their form as well - and isn't it always one of those horrible formswhere someone knows about typewriters but knows nothing about tables in Word -so every response means you also have to correct their document too!

Our supplier self audit form has a 'get out of jail free'option if they hold a BRC Grade A - they can skip to the sign-off bit andcomplete the form in 2 minutes. Our stats show we get more than 80% of thoseback in under a week - but we struggle to get half of the lesser qualified supplierdetails back - maybe their grade says more about some of them than just thestatus of food safety, food quality and regulatory compliance. Our buyers arespending bit more to have only Grade A suppliers …

So our position is always to respond but to do so after afew checks and a chat. This always helps me get in the mood to respond …

Hope it helps you too …

Kind regards,

Graham


ps Mr GMOs idea about standardised SAQs and a subscription is brilliant! Anyone know how to make it happen?

[Bawdy01]

In a previous QA Managers role i was receiving so many of these that it drove me crazy. I was tempted to supply ridiculous answers just to see if any one was actually reading them. I.e Name of the pest Control Company - Mickey Mouse, as i was convinved that very few of them were actually read when returned. I didn't do it because i knew that the only people who would notice it would be the customer's auditors, and that would have put my customers in a very embarrasing situation and no doubt could have ruined the relationship between them and us.

I did do the suggested option of developing a precompleted Supplier Questionaire Answer Form, it worked a treat. I never had a customer come back and complain about it. I would double check that all that was asked for by the customer was covered by the completed SQAF, and modify it it didnt and return it. I would keep the modifications as part of the SQAF, as no doubt another customer would ask the same in the future. Obviously each customer got answers or information to questions they did not ask, but they never complained about this either.

Eventually the SQAF required no mods, so it took about 2 minutes to deal with Customer Questionaires. Saved me a lot of work, it was one of things I found myself asking - Why did i not do this sooner?

My 2 cents worth.

[GMO]

Good idea. I'm sure it would work with smaller customers, unfortunately not the big boys.

We ask for BRC or other GFSI standard and if achieved grade A or B and are prepared to send certificate and the report and a summary from the HACCP plan then the questions are reduced from the three pages to about 10 in total.

In our company we do read every SAQ and anyone sending back silly answers would get both barrels!

[shivsingh]

This is an interesting topic.

We are seeing more of these questionnaires and third party portals requests. In the cases where one is forced to answer the questionnaires, does anyone here includes a proper disclaimer statement at all? As a distributor, we have to transposing or share manufacturer's information and hence I am in search of the proper language or disclaimer statement to cover the validity or accuracy of the  information provided onto these customers questionnaires. 

Any insight will be greatly appreciated. 

 

S. Singh

[Charles.C]

This is an interesting topic.

We are seeing more of these questionnaires and third party portals requests. In the cases where one is forced to answer the questionnaires, does anyone here includes a proper disclaimer statement at all? As a distributor, we have to transposing or share manufacturer's information and hence I am in search of the proper language or disclaimer statement to cover the validity or accuracy of the  information provided onto these customers questionnaires. 

Any insight will be greatly appreciated. 

 

S. Singh

 

Hi S.Singh,

 

This excellent albeit ageing thread (11 years old) contains answers which I think are mostly mirrored in later threads having similar queries.

 

You can see responses varied from total acquiescence (!) to paucity, ie minimal offerings dependent on the specific situation (eg leverage).

 

Perhaps the concept of a "disclaimer" should be replaced by a Confidentiality Policy ?
 

[pHruit]

This is an interesting topic.

We are seeing more of these questionnaires and third party portals requests. In the cases where one is forced to answer the questionnaires, does anyone here includes a proper disclaimer statement at all? As a distributor, we have to transposing or share manufacturer's information and hence I am in search of the proper language or disclaimer statement to cover the validity or accuracy of the  information provided onto these customers questionnaires. 

Any insight will be greatly appreciated. 

 

S. Singh

Yes, with questionnaires I'll often include an addendum prior to the signature section, noting anything we object to in included Ts&Cs (which often seem to get lumped into food safety questionnaires), our specific interpretation of particular questions and how we've answered them etc. The specific format and content of this depends very much on the nature of what we're being asked to sign up to, and who is asking us to sign it.

 

The third-party portals are a different kettle of fish, as many of them force responses in a specific format and leave little to no scope for commenting, querying, or outright disagreeing. With these I tend to do a preliminary review to understand what's being asked first, and them make notes of all the troublesome bits and pass it to legal (or at least I did, when I worked somewhere large enough to have a legal department ) to argue over with the customer's legal people, before agreeing a position statement that would apply to any and all data we provided through the portal.

[shivsingh]

Yes, with questionnaires I'll often include an addendum prior to the signature section, noting anything we object to in included Ts&Cs (which often seem to get lumped into food safety questionnaires), our specific interpretation of particular questions and how we've answered them etc. The specific format and content of this depends very much on the nature of what we're being asked to sign up to, and who is asking us to sign it.

 

The third-party portals are a different kettle of fish, as many of them force responses in a specific format and leave little to no scope for commenting, querying, or outright disagreeing. With these I tend to do a preliminary review to understand what's being asked first, and them make notes of all the troublesome bits and pass it to legal (or at least I did, when I worked somewhere large enough to have a legal department ) to argue over with the customer's legal people, before agreeing a position statement that would apply to any and all data we provided through the portal.

 I appreciate the prompt response. The third party portal is very challenging as they are very wide and not specific to industry or types of vendors. As a distributor company, we are faced with our supplier not able to complete or customers request but share relevant documents. However, to fulfill the demands of the portals, we have to have a team to interpret and transpose the relevant information accordingly.

Getting the legal group involve can be equally challenging as well.

 

Once again, thank you for your insights.

 

Shiv

[TimG]

Hello Shiv. As the manufacturer of a product that is moved through a few large chemical distributers (Brenntag, Univar, etc.) they push all of the questionnaires to me for my product. There are questions on there that I wouldn't expect the distributor to have a clue about. It's my opinion that even though I am filling out questionnaires for a customer of a customer (distributor is my customer, end user is theirs), there is really little better option. The only thing I've been kicking around for a while now is, as the manufacturer, putting together a 'questionnaire/document kit.'

Either way, I don't see how you as the distributor can be expected to answer all of the manufacturing/facility questions on a typical questionnaire. I'm shocked you don't kick it back to the manufacturers.