How do you approve an external laundry?

Do you audit, send questionnaire, request certification, expect HACCP system and pre-requisites?

If anyone has experience, documents, guidelines to share I would be very grateful if you could share.

Thanks,

Simon

Simon,

I'm currently doing this now for my company and our uniform service. I asked for the following. 

1. Laundering procedures, any critical point like temperature, temp and chemical concentration.

2. Storage and transport procedures.

2. If loads are segregated by client or like industry, if not could they do so.

3. What chemicals do the use, perform a risk analysis.

In house perform micro testing on uniforms provided, establish a baseline for future testing

This is a not an area addressed by SQF but by TFMS, I felt the need to strengthen this area .

Hi

I think SPL covered all the key issues

The other considerations are:

 4. what do your Customer's expect through their Standards?

 5. if you have any other accreditation what do they expect?

 6. What type of product do you make, high risk, low risk etc?

you will find that if you are making high risk own label products the customer will expect a physical audit of the laundry

rgds

Hi,

In addition we asked about needle control. They may well do repairs and they need to ensure they control the needles so that they do not come back in the garment causing injury or F.B. issues.

We initially sent a questionnaire to the laundry but then one customer insisted that we conduct one audit and based on the findings risk assessed the need /frequency of other audits. We had a Service Level Agreement (see attached for and example)  and template for the audit.

Hope this helps.

Sharon (Dewsbury , West Yorkshire, UK)