Raw Material Risk Assessment for Supplier Audit Program

How do i go about doing a risk assessment for raw materials and tie that into my supplier audit program?

You need to define metrics that you want to grade your suppliers by. 

Many manufacturers have surveys they have their suppliers fill out with questions like:

Do you have a HACCP plan

   How many CCPs are in your HACCP plan

Do you have an X Program

Do you have a Y program

How often do you run a traceability/recall exercise?

    When was the last recall exercise performed?

Are you certified by a GFSI standard?

   If so which one?

Are you audited by any other 3rd party auditor

   List auditor companies:_____________

Things like that.  Also you want to access how well they supply you with documentation that you request like specs, country of origin statement, etc.

If they perform poorly you can have a few different grades like:

     Excellent:  Company filled out survey and supplied all appropriate documentation

     Good: Company filled out survey, most documentation, easy to contact

     Probation:  Company didn't fill out survey or a portion of documentation was not received or very difficult to contact.

     Fail:  Company refused or failed to give appropriate documentation. 

Once you have a grade for the company you can use the information they gave you to do a risk assessment on the ingredient.

If they have a HACCP program, cleaning program, are GFSI certified and/or 3rd party audited and received good scores your risk should be lower.  If it's a liquid product you may want to send out some for testing for appropriate biological contamination or ask the supplier for test results.

Does any or all of that make sense? 

How do i go about doing a risk assessment for raw materials and tie that into my supplier audit program?

From a purely haccp pov, some receivers initially do a theoretical risk assessment based on the specific item / their process and classify the raw material into, for example, high/low/medium risk.

They then implement (a) an "appropriate" supplier facility assessment as per previous post + (b) an appropriately formulated (ie based on the initial RA)  incoming sampling frequency / evaluation procedure. The latter is then typically updated on a semi-continuous basis as per the resulting accept/reject data and specific corrective actions implemented if necessary, eg increases/dcreases in sampling frequency (this is, in principle, a long-established technique, eg Mil.Std).

The operational details will depend on yr unknown process.

Rgds / Charles.C

When we do a risk assessment for suppliers we look at two different aspects, Quality and Food Safety

We rate each of those on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being common occurrences of Quality/Food Safety and 5 being no occurrences of Quality/Food Safety. We rate quality by looking at past history/reviews, condition of received materials, customer complaints, agreeing to our standards, etc. When we rate food safety issues we look at supplier history, whether they can supply letters of guarantee, certificates of conformance, or certificates of analysis, if they agree to our standards, and proof of any audit documentation that they have verifying safe product. We then multiply those scores and rate them as disqualified as supplier, needs corrective actions to improve approval status, or approved. Scores must be greater than an 11 to be an approved supplier (ex. Quality-3 Food Safety-4 = 12...approved supplier, Quality - 4 Food Safety-2...corrective action needed) a total score of 5 or below would disqualify a supplier

A letter of guarantee or some sort of certification/agreement will almost always be enough to defend your approval of a supplier!

When we do a risk assessment for suppliers we look at two different aspects, Quality and Food Safety

We rate each of those on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being common occurrences of Quality/Food Safety and 5 being no occurrences of Quality/Food Safety. We rate quality by looking at past history/reviews, condition of received materials, customer complaints, agreeing to our standards, etc. When we rate food safety issues we look at supplier history, whether they can supply letters of guarantee, certificates of conformance, or certificates of analysis, if they agree to our standards, and proof of any audit documentation that they have verifying safe product. We then multiply those scores and rate them as disqualified as supplier, needs corrective actions to improve approval status, or approved. Scores must be greater than an 11 to be an approved supplier (ex. Quality-3 Food Safety-4 = 12...approved supplier, Quality - 4 Food Safety-2...corrective action needed) a total score of 5 or below would disqualify a supplier

 

A letter of guarantee or some sort of certification/agreement will almost always be enough to defend your approval of a supplier!

Dear dbloomstrand,

Thks for the (supplier) input.

How about the risk assessment for the raw material ?

Rgds / Charles.C

PS - the OP process is unknown however i might add that many of the elegant supplier approval procedures completely collapse for some types of raw material. Try buying yr raw fish from a market-type scenario. Of course it's, hopefully, relatively low risk. :smile:

thanks for the inputs by the way we are a cookie and cracker manufacturing company.

dear jessica,

 you have to do a analysis of potential risk (hazard, quality and avaliability) that can make your business stop. and rate your supplier based your own analysis. 

and prioritize to audit the most potential risk to your busines.

Rgds

AS Nur