2 replies to this topic

[Jurate]

Dear All,

I would like to share my problem and to ask how to deal with it. Our customers sends us long questionaires every year and they ask as to complete. The thing is that thera are a lot of questions which covers the BRC and I am so tired to answer all of them... How are you solving that problem, because I dont want to waste my time any more and I am thinking to compile the our standard answer to the questionaire and to cover the most popular questions or tI will answer next time only questions which are outside of the BRC.

Thank you for reply.

Rgds,
Jurate

[esquef]

We send out a lot questionnaires to our suppliers also (we have over 800 of them!). One recently replied with a standard form that they called an answer-aire. It was basically an AIB-type audit with everything filled in. It answered about 99% of what we needed to know for our Approved Supplier Program. A quick email exhange cleared up the remaining 1%. Also, if you're company is GFSI certified send proof of certification. When we get proof of GFSI certification the supplier is automatically approved for another year (unless we've has issues with them in the past year). It seemed like a really efficient way to deal with this issue, and I'm working on a similar document right now.

[HACCP Mentor]

This whole process is such a paperwork nightmare and can take up a considerable amount of time. I never understand why customers will only do business with you unless you have a particular standard but then want to generate questionaires based on the requirements of the standard. Isn't that one of the purposes of 3rd party certification?

From the other side, the majority of standards require that you assess your suppliers at a defined period. Have a look at what your own procedures say and be fair to your suppliers. If you are happy with making sure that they are certified to xxx standard, accept their updated and current certificate. Get a copy of their updated ingredient specifications. Look at performance based on your daily experience with them through the products and services that they are suppling to you. You can record your outcomes yourself rather than having to rely on suppliers filling out massive questionaires and getting them back to you.