16 replies to this topic

[Elliot]

Firstly hi to everyone on the forum, it's good to be back after a long hiatus. Can anyone offer guidance on the structure of a BRC manual, do you write it as per the clause numbering in the standard or some other way. It seems clause by clause is easiest for all involved including when under audit. Just looking for different approaches from members.



Thanks,
Elliot

[D-D]

You could do it by clause or by topic. I did it by the latter as you can then bring together different parts and clauses that cross over each other but are not necessarily in the same place the way the standard is written e.g. 3.5 is all about supplier control but 5.4.1 and 5.4.3 is about purchase of packaging so it is worth rolling the prose about that into the same procedure. There are other examples too and a good way to start is dump it all into a spreadsheet and then go through it assigning each clause to the procedure it fits best (by title) then start writing them up to bring it all together.
It is time consuming but I like spreadsheets for this sort of thing and it will also work as a gap analysis to make sure you cover it all and is further adaptable to make into an index and audit template too.
I would not advise referring to specific clauses by number as the next time the standard is updated it will likely throw them all out of sequence and you will have to revise everything...

[Charles.C]

Firstly hi to everyone on the forum, it's good to be back after a long hiatus. Can anyone offer guidance on the structure of a BRC manual, do you write it as per the clause numbering in the standard or some other way. It seems clause by clause is easiest for all involved including when under audit. Just looking for different approaches from members.
Thanks,
Elliot

Dear Elliot,

Assuming you mean a Quality Manual, the simplest construction method is to "reverse engineer" the Standards specific clause requirements. This procedure does tend to automatically generate a close match for numbering style of course as per previous post.

Other people just like to be creative. IMEX some auditors are not enamoured by such textual dexterity and start looking for specific omissions to hit on.

Rgds / Charles.C

[frawat]

Hi,

I would suggest considering not doing a "BRC Manual" but rather "your company" quality management system manual, which should be tailored to the way things are done in your company, the quality culture, key success factors, etc., and would probably include some more things than just the requisites of BRC (even though this is an excellent standard). For example cost, yield or efficiency issues. Unless somebody thinks this should be separated from the quality manual? Also environmental and employee safety issues.

I mean the content and not the form or structure of the manual.
What happened to us is that that there is a tendency to distort the purpose of the QMS on just trying to comply with the certification audit, and the documents or systems are not used along the year to have a better business and customer results, among other things.

Just a comment, thanks for your feedback.

Francis

[trubertq]

Hi,

I would suggest considering not doing a "BRC Manual" but rather "your company" quality management system manual, which should be tailored to the way things are done in your company, the quality culture, key success factors, etc., and would probably include some more things than just the requisites of BRC (even though this is an excellent standard). For example cost, yield or efficiency issues. Unless somebody thinks this should be separated from the quality manual? Also environmental and employee safety issues.

I mean the content and not the form or structure of the manual.
What happened to us is that that there is a tendency to distort the purpose of the QMS on just trying to comply with the certification audit, and the documents or systems are not used along the year to have a better business and customer results, among other things.

Just a comment, thanks for your feedback.

Francis

Huh, if we did that the manual would e very thin!!!

[frawat]

Huh, if we did that the manual would e very thin!!!

Yes, I know what you mean!
But maybe you could clarify more please?
Thanks

[mgourley]

Whether right or wrong, what I have done is restate the clauses in the first person and then added a reference to the specific internal policy, etc., that shows how we meet the intent of the standard.

If you want to keep strict adherence to the clause numbering, I guess it will require some editing when a new version comes out. I'd rather do that every three years if it meant that the "flow" of the audit were linear.

Marshall

[MCIAN]

I agree with Mgourley. That's how i structured our manual also - per requirement of the standard. It helps simplify the thinking process of the auditors who are accustomed to the structure of the Standard therefore less clarifications needed from me.

[trubertq]

Sorry for being flippant, Charles has firmly slapped my wrists!

I have laid the manual out as per the standard, but also include the other things which are necessary for the efficient running of the business, the idea is that we communicate to everyone that Quality is everybody's responsibility. I have decided that this year it will no longer be referred to as the 'BRC Manual' but as the Quality and Food Safety Manual, so that it is not perceived as a 'project' each year, but that it is subsumed into the day to day running of the production process.

Progress is slow, which will always be the case with culture shifts. The Company are undergoing restructuring and it is a great opportunity for applying the principles of the standard to actual operations. I think that making the relevant managers/ supervisors etc aware of the minimum requirements ( BRC requirements per se), helps with this.

I'll let you know how things go, as we have scheduled our audit 4 months early to get it to a time of year when it is not such a pain in the aspidistra

Ultimately the layout of the manual is up to you, so long as you can provide an auditor evidence of compliance in a timely manner, I have noticed that if there is a lot of time spent looking for stuff get's them irritated, the confidence with which you present evidence makes a difference to your outcomes ( this is just my personal opinion, based on the last audit).


I am going to the corner now to write my lines.....

I will not make smart remarks
I will not make smart remarks
I will not make smart remarks....

[Rosemary4]

I have arranged our Quality Systems Manual (BRC) by topic. We have never had any issues with the auditor and meets the requirement. I haven't listed the criteria by clause but tried to use some of the words from the Standard in the text.

The list of our documents is:

QAP000

3

Quality Manual

November 2012

QAP000.1

7

Management Organisation Chart

November 2012

QAP000.2

2

Management Responsibilities

September 2012

QAP001

3

Product Safety & Quality Policy

August 2012

QAP002

2

Hygiene Policy & Regulations

November 2012

QAP003

1

Health & Safety Policy

October 2010

QAP004

1

Environmental Policy

October 2010

QAP005

1

Training Policy

October 2010

QAP006

1

Control Policies

October 2010

QAP007

1

Customer Enquiry Process – to be updated

October 2010

QAP008

1

Sales Order Process

October 2010

QAP009

2

Supplier Approval Process

November 2012

QAP010

2

Tooling

November 2012

QAP011

2

Purchasing Process

November 2012

QAP012

1

Pre & Manufacture Process

October 2010

QAP013

2

Maintenance Process

November 2011

QAP014

1

Non-Conforming Goods

October 2010

QAP015

2

Housekeeping & Cleaning

November 2012

QAP016

2

Audit Process

November 2012

QAP017

2

Personal Health

November 2012

QAP018

1

Traceability

October 2010

QAP019

2

Incident & Product Recall

November 2012

[Ulrich Schraewer]

Hi Elliot,

Just saw your question regards manual structure. Defiantly do not use the BRC structure! This has caused a lot of trouble when changes were made from Issue 4 to Issue 5 as the new chapter 1 Management Decision was included. You 'll never know what issue 7 will bring. A lot of companies had to re-write their manual. I have implemented many FSMS and always used the structure of the ISO 9001:2008. It is proven and works. You can than tweak it to BRC. One last thing. You may need to comply at some stage with other standards such as IFS or FSSC etc. Again we have other structures and numbering etc. Do you own thing e.g. ISO 9001 structure. Hope this helps. Ulrich

Firstly hi to everyone on the forum, it's good to be back after a long hiatus. Can anyone offer guidance on the structure of a BRC manual, do you write it as per the clause numbering in the standard or some other way. It seems clause by clause is easiest for all involved including when under audit. Just looking for different approaches from members.


Thanks,
Elliot

[WBSimon]

Hi Elliot

I may have a different perspective. We have gone fromPrimusGFS to SQF 2000 to the newly updated SQF 7. Each time we rearranged our documentation to follow the new standard. Not a minor undertaking.

Within a week after our SQF 7 audit, we had a surprise visitfrom another customer that had their own standard. Spent a good amount of timejumping back and forth trying to find the documents they were asking becausetheir standard was in a different order.

I will not want to go through that again. I am setting upour manual according to OUR standard. Followed by a thorough indexing and crossreference.

Hope that helps

Firstly hi to everyone on the forum, it's good to be back after a long hiatus. Can anyone offer guidance on the structure of a BRC manual, do you write it as per the clause numbering in the standard or some other way. It seems clause by clause is easiest for all involved including when under audit. Just looking for different approaches from members.


Thanks,
Elliot

Edited by WBSimon, 01 February 2013 - 07:24 PM.

[mgourley]

This post really demonstrates why there is no "right" way to set up a manual. If you are the person "in charge" of the manual, in whatever form it may be in, you should know where to go when an auditor or customer wants to see a specific program, policy or procedure.

Marshall

[frawat]

Sorry for being flippant, Charles has firmly slapped my wrists!

I have laid the manual out as per the standard, but also include the other things which are necessary for the efficient running of the business, the idea is that we communicate to everyone that Quality is everybody's responsibility. I have decided that this year it will no longer be referred to as the 'BRC Manual' but as the Quality and Food Safety Manual, so that it is not perceived as a 'project' each year, but that it is subsumed into the day to day running of the production process.

Progress is slow, which will always be the case with culture shifts. The Company are undergoing restructuring and it is a great opportunity for applying the principles of the standard to actual operations. I think that making the relevant managers/ supervisors etc aware of the minimum requirements ( BRC requirements per se), helps with this.

I'll let you know how things go, as we have scheduled our audit 4 months early to get it to a time of year when it is not such a pain in the aspidistra

Ultimately the layout of the manual is up to you, so long as you can provide an auditor evidence of compliance in a timely manner, I have noticed that if there is a lot of time spent looking for stuff get's them irritated, the confidence with which you present evidence makes a difference to your outcomes ( this is just my personal opinion, based on the last audit).


I am going to the corner now to write my lines.....

I will not make smart remarks
I will not make smart remarks
I will not make smart remarks....

Thanks trubertq! I appreciate your comments
Francis

[gkcaduceus]

Thank you everyone. Your comments are greatly appreciated. Based on the comments we will perform a risk assessment, and develop a more granulated uniform policy.

[Shyguy77]

BRC offers a "Self Assessment Tool" to see how you are meeting the standard. We did this going down clause by clause and wrote down how we met each of them through our own Quality Manual or what we needed to do to meet that standard.

[wret]

My approach, similar to what was mentioned above, was to make all the procedures and policies required by BRC and existing procedures together into a "company manual" NOT a "BRC manual". Don't get caught up into linking a numbering system to the BRC standards. It’s likely you have some existing procedures that don’t relate to a specific BRC requirement, and if you are like me, you won’t want two separate sets of procedures.



I did divide my manual into sections that correspond to the standard to make it easier to correlate the procedural requirements to the standard but I can append new procedures to any section without upsetting existing pagination or numbering systems.