SQF Certification Request - What history of records is required?
Hi!
My company its planning to get the SQF Certification but we are corrently changing/improving all our forms and updating all the procedure to the new SQF code.
We may request the audit for July, do you guys think that we will be ok or we need more time to wait the have enought records?
What level of SQF are you attempting to attain? Anything Level 2 or 3 requires a desktop audit a minimum of 30 days in advance. So if you can have your documents done by June and get them scheduled with an SQF body, then yes, it's possible.
When we did our SQF certification, we completely converted our old SOP book to a FS-QMS system for the desktop audit. So with that in place we only had about a month of new documents to show. We were happy to show them the old programs, and we were honest and up front that SQF was a huge step forward for us, and we've improve these programs in these ways. The auditors were impressed with how far we had come, re-iterated that when the come back next year they'll expect to see a years worth of follow through on the new documents. Because the audit is a "snap shot" at the time of the audit, I think you could easily do the same. If your old documents don't meet standard, but you can show the new ones do, it sounds like you'd be in the same place we were.
Thank you very much for your interesting answer...
The problem its with the CCP's records and a couple of important records that werent quite perfect and now but now they will.. So, usually the auditors ask for 1 year old records... what do you think?
Thank you very much for your interesting answer...
The problem its with the CCP's records and a couple of important records that werent quite perfect and now but now they will.. So, usually the auditors ask for 1 year old records... what do you think?
It depends on what you mean by not quite perfect paperwork. People do paperwork and people make errors. It is how you handle the mistakes. Do you do Corrective Actions when people have missed items?
Best,
Setanta
SQFI has made the suggestion in the past that the company has at minimum 2-3 months worth of implementation/records/logs, etc. We make the recommendation to our clients that once system development is done that implementation phase be 3-4 months at min. for shake out and then the desk audit is done and following that the cert audit. Your time-line appears to be very aggressive and really does appear to provide enough time for implementation/record/log, etc generation -- i.e. enough stuff for the auditor to review. Also depending on what FSCs you have you'll need to check the availability of auditors that are certified in the same FSCs and are available. This is a busy year for SQF consulting and auditing, schedules are filling out fast.
Hope that helps.
Glenn Oster
SQFI has made the suggestion in the past that the company has at minimum 2-3 months worth of implementation/records/logs, etc. We make the recommendation to our clients that once system development is done that implementation phase be 3-4 months at min. for shake out and then the desk audit is done and following that the cert audit. Your time-line appears to be very aggressive and really does appear to provide enough time for implementation/record/log, etc generation -- i.e. enough stuff for the auditor to review. Also depending on what FSCs you have you'll need to check the availability of auditors that are certified in the same FSCs and are available. This is a busy year for SQF consulting and auditing, schedules are filling out fast.
Hope that helps.
Glenn Oster
I agree usually we book our auditor for the next year about a month after our current audit. Depending on food sector category auditors could very well be limited and require advanced booking of several months ahead.