Dear John Moreton,
Its an interesting project.
The options's advantages must depend on how many hazard differences exist between input ingredients, ie how many differences between haccp plans.
I had previously assumed almost none so that if the only ingredient-specific control segment is, for example, within a (separate) prerequisite manual for incoming materials, the use of dummy X,Y,Z variables elsewhere is presumably less complicated. ?
Regardless, it seems to me that one unavoidable “business” problem is where you are obliged to issue product-specific haccp plans to customers, this will presumably demand completion of an appropriately worded specific plan. Just like yr product specifications in fact. Usage of a cross-referencing system would then be problematic IMO unless your company is happy to provide an encyclopaedic Index. (Bit like reading a typical ISO22000 HACCP Plan [eg see my yoghurt plan on this forum] where all the prerequisites are simply cross-coded to PAS220, very convenient for the writer but can no doubt become irritating for readers
).
I previously encountered an analogous situation to yours for Fresh Raw Material Specifications where 30, mostly similar but with numerous individual variations were involved. Lacking Excel expertise I used Word’s cruder matrix-type offerings. It was a slog but the subsequent updating / selective printing option is greatly facilitated, especially if multiply-repeated edits occur. Nowadays, database software / matrices as per Tony’s comment probably makes such a job a piece of cake (especially if it’s someone else’s cake).
Rgds / Charles.C
PS – a somewhat analogous but slightly expanded problem to yours occurs in the presentation of combined format, haccp plans for foodservice. One solution there has been to generate the 2 or 3 CCP, representative haccp flowcharts commonly involved as individual blocks within frames, the latter of which are then presented together in a “master” snapshot. Lists are then constructed for the items in the separate frames. I think there are 1-2 threads with example/attachments of this concept on this forum.