Quality Manual BRC 3.1.1

BRC 3.1.1 states that 'the company's documented procedures, working methods and practices shall be collated in the form of a printed or electronic quality manual.'

Does that mean that despite having all the documents you also need to have them collated to form a new separate document and call it a quality manual?

Kindly help.

You need to have them in a format that is easily accessible for everyone. There is no need to have them in a separate document, I have done away with the paper manuals and have everything in soft copy and I print as they are required. This means there isn't a copy of the manual with old issues of documents  floating about the building. There is one manual on the server that everyone uses for access to forms, SOP's and policies. 

BRC 3.1.1 states that 'the company's documented procedures, working methods and practices shall be collated in the form of a printed or electronic quality manual.'

Does that mean that despite having all the documents you also need to have them collated to form a new separate document and call it a quality manual?

Kindly help.

Hi Waciru,

BRC Guidance on clause 3.1.1 Food safety and quality manual:

'Policies, procedures and work instructions must be in place, easily retrievable and available where needed.....These documents shall be collated into one or more quality manuals which form the reference point for all documents included in the quality system.

In a small operation the manual may contain the majority of the procedures controlling the processes. In a complex operation it may containe headline policies and reference where more detailed operating instructions may be found.

The manual should include an overview of how the company's policies and procedures are organised.'

Basically the quality manual should contain your food safety and quality management policies, procedures and work instructions or explain how the food safety and quality management is organised and where relevant documents can be found.

Regards,

Tony

This is very helpful as i have been having the same problem, figuring out what to put in the quality manual since we already have a procedures manual.

So a control Document List which links the all SOP/Procedure and forms to the location on the hard drive would be the Quality Manual?
 

Thanks

 

So a control Document List which links the all SOP/Procedure and forms to the location on the hard drive would be the Quality Manual?
 

Thanks

 

Hi Remi,

I think you have described a "Document Register". The "Quality Manual" (QM) would logically exist on the Hard Drive.

Post 3 nicely explains the BRC expectations.

The QM essentially "spells out" how yr FSMS (minimally) complies to the requirements of the text of the BRC Standard. This  approach is borrowed from iso 9001.

The format for the QM is flexible. One traditional ISO 9001 response is to simply reverse-engineer the 9001 Standard's own text while simultaneously creating/numbering/cross-referencing documents for the desired Policies, Procedures, Work Instructions (eg see Post3). This methodology is also acceptable for BRC. The generated documents can presumably be "collated" as you wish as long as you comply with clauses 3.2.(1 -3).

To illustrate the interpretation - 

IA extract.pdf   19.99KB   291 downloads

Hi Remi,

We keep a document control registry as the index to the electronic forms, which shows the electronic location of our policies, processes and forms. For audit day purposes, we print out the complete program for ease of access during the audit.

I have run a completely paperless audit in a previous company, but there are times, the hard copy is simpler for the auditor.

Hope this helps.