Mock Recall exercise
Can anyone tell me how many times you perform your Mock Recall.......... If ONCE, why, if more WHY? I am in a debate.
Below is the BRC guidelines. I read "at least" annually as being suggested as more than.
BRC 3.11.3: Product recall & withdrawal shall be tested, at least, annually
Thanks for any & all responses!
Hi I do it twice, it's for White refined Sugar containers, I just make sure that the exercise work at it's best at anytime. I think that the most time you make it the most reliable it is!! of course if you have time. But once or more, the most important is to make sure that it works.
Every company that I have worked for does this annually to comply with regulations and to ensure that the process works as written.
We are required to do it once, but do it three times with a different starting point each time.
1. Finished Product
2. Packaging Material
3. Ingredient
We supply ASDA, so have to d it twice!
My scenarios are much talked about where I work! Next time I think ill use the scenario that George Clooney has thrown his wedding ring into one of our production silos!
Ching Ching!
Hi Mariah,
i would like to understand, why packaging material and Ingredient since you already have an HACCP plan, could please clarify,
kind regards,
Michael G
Dear AnitaC,
BRC 3.11.3: Product recall & withdrawal shall be tested, at least, annually
I read this as = "at least once per year" = a minimum of 1 time/year = (I suspect) for many people a (documented) maximum of 1 time/yr also. :smile:
Rgds / Charles.C
PS - the previous posters are almost too good to be true but can only be applauded !
Hi -
The expectation is once a year, at minimum.
But, as Mariah mentioned, to get to a point where you are comfortable in round up all the products potentially impacted due to various factors like
Ingredients,
Packaging Materials &
production/process breaks like Cleaning/Sanitation or
Breakdown Maintenance related scenarios, etc.,
It will take a multiple attempts in a year, a few years depending upon the SKUs you have in your portfolio to address all the gap identified and refine that for the company to gain the confidence in their Recall readiness.
So, In my experience, in most cases, you will end up doing more than 2-3 per year if you are dealing with Multiple Products categories with the usual innovation & renovation projects that happens quite regularly at many organizations.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Agasr.
I agree with everything that Agasr said and wat to add the following:
Yes, the expectation for the mock Recovery is once per year minimum but, consider adding before/after regular hours, conducting the Mock on a weekend and/ or on a holiday.
Consider what would happen if the 'normal' personnel involved were not at the facility to answer the phones, or they were on holiday. Are people present who can actually understand the process and, can they execute it?).
This would result in alot of Mock recovery exercises but, as your company becomes more effiicent and successful at the exercise, the process will become better.
I know my answer would make more work but the company will be better for it.
Best of luck.
I once had a customer auditor who had a hidden agenda and walked in with four completed products and asked to have complete trace back to all raw materials and the COAs for all raw materials for the four items along with production data in thirty minutes. I know there is no requirement to that level of time expectation (even in the customers' supplier manual) but we hit it out of the park and had it all in front of her in less than twenty minutes. Funny thing is it took her three hours to go over each item and then try to pick it apart. It was a long two days....
Hope all your auditors are forever objective!
Anita C,
For most GFSI audits (I can't say all because I'm not familiar with all) it is ok to test once per year.
HOWEVER, here are some exceptions:
Your company requires you to test more than once per year. (Corporate is asking for semi-annual, quarterly, etc.)
You have a customer that requires you to test more than once per year. (Aspirago, Nestle, FoodMaker, etc.) Make sure to read over their requirements.
You fail your own mock recall. Logically as a corrective action is to do another mock recall after you've done your investigation and you've made your corrections to validate your action items did in fact address the root cause of failing the mock recall.
For Agasr point, some customers do require ingredients, packaging, along with WIP or FG. It will be who of you to test a FG along with at least one packaging or ingredient. I've had management fight me on packaging but I never go empty handed into a "fight". I showed management how much Kellogg lost in stock $$$$$ (What management cares about) due to the recall concerning "contaminated packaging" making their product taste like "chemical" and made people sick.
http://www.ewg.org/r...risks-packaging
Bottom line, How prepared do you want to be when the _____ hits the fan, because everyone is going to be looking at you. That is Anita, if you're the one in charge of the system.
Have a good system that you have reliance on and know that you can go forward and backward in the trace/recall. Remember to collect percentage of material recovered and the time to completion. Then you know you only need the once a year minimum. I have always offered to do a trace during an audit to every auditor because of the confidence we had in the system.
I once had a customer auditor who had a hidden agenda and walked in with four completed products and asked to have complete trace back to all raw materials and the COAs for all raw materials for the four items along with production data in thirty minutes. I know there is no requirement to that level of time expectation (even in the customers' supplier manual) but we hit it out of the park and had it all in front of her in less than twenty minutes. Funny thing is it took her three hours to go over each item and then try to pick it apart. It was a long two days....
Hope all your auditors are forever objective!
Dear srm,
Interesting content / thks, but slightly unrelated to a "BRC - mock recall" which AFAIK involves forward only.
Rgds / Charles.C