Verification of Process Flow Diagram

How many people are on your HACCP team?

Which disciplines are they from?

How many of those verify the Process Flow Diagram?

answers on a postcard.........

Hi,

I am from the bakery sector.

The HACCP team should be composed by a  multi-disciplinary food safety team which includes those responsible for quality/technical, production operations, engineering and other relevant functions.

We are 9 in my team: production and packing supervisors and manager, quality manager, maintenance manager and manager director.

and do all of those people verify the flow diagram???

and do all of those people verify the flow diagram???

Hi trubertq, 

BRC:

2.6 "Verify Flow Diagram - Codex Alimentarius Step 5" 

2.6.1 The HACCP food safety team shall verify the accuracy of the flow diagrams by on-site audit and challenge at least annually. Daily and seasonal variations shall be considered and evaluated. Records of verification of flow diagrams shall be maintained. 

See also: http://www.fao.org/d...9e/y1579e03.htm  

Guidelines for the Application of the HACCP System: 

5. On-site confirmation of flow diagram

The HACCP team should confirm the processing operation against the flow diagram during all stages and hours of operation and amend the flow diagram where appropriate.

One of the benefits to having your entire cross-functional HACCP team verify your flow diagram is the ability to have more eyes looking at the entire process flow. The more eyes verifying your flow, the less likely you will be to inadvertently omit something. 

-Chris 

and do all of those people verify the flow diagram???

This seems a very strange question to me.

I have never considered that the flow-diagram, could haven been not done by the whole HACCP team. Again it shows that I am a very naive auditor.

Can you tell us who is in your HACCP team?

And why is it difficulty to let them all together verify the flow diagram?

How about other verification actions that normally are the responsibility of the HACCP-team?

Do you have pointed these to a dedicated HACCP-team member?

I am asking the questions purely from the point of view of an external technical support. It's something that came up last week in a discussion and I wanted to clarify it in my own mind.

Thank you for your responses 

If the process has not been changed, we only verify the flow chart once a year. You can do that as part of your HACCP review for example. The HACCP team must be present at that time, therefore,you could take this as an opportunity.

I suppose what I am really trying to get at is ...do all members of the HACCP team sign the flow diagram?

The Flow diagram is reviewed annually ( unless something changes obviously) but if you have 9 people on your HACCP Team do all of them sign the flow diagram to verify it's veracity?

Do you all go out and walk the lines to make sure that the diagram is accurate? 

As I say, I am just curious to see what people  do in general.

I don't see why it would be necessary to go out as a group to verify this.  As was mentioned above, attach the flow chart to the agenda, asking for responses would work, or just bring copies to the meeting.

We have a meeting annually (provided there have been no changes to our process) to discuss issues, customer complaints, etc.  We are cross functional, maintenance, QA, production, managers. We do not sign off on the flow diagram, but we do sign attendance at the HACCP meeting.

Setanta

I suppose what I am really trying to get at is ...do all members of the HACCP team sign the flow diagram?

 

signing of the flow diagram is one way t oshow that the HACCP team has verified the flow diagram, but there are many other ways to document this verification.

E.g. as a part of your annual review/ HACCP-verification as is mentioned before or on separate meeting munutes or by keeping copies of the flow diagram with notes and remarks of all members or ... I am sure we can think of more ways to demonstrate verification.

And yes, all the members of the HACCP-team should be involved in the verification of the HACCP verification. You do not have a multidisciplinary team to let 1 person do all the work.

Walking the lines is a very good way of verifying the correctness of your flow diagram.

I would not walk the lines with 9 persons at the same time. Each one can do it on his own and if there are deviations these can be discussed and when needed the team can check it all together.