2..1..1 SQF Management Policy
Good Afternoon, while attending an Advanced SQF Practitioner training the subject of our Management Policy came up in relation to stating Food Safety and Quality Objectives. I was told it is no longer sufficient now just to state we do an annual review and continuous improvement of our Food Safety and Food Quality program objectives within our policy they are now looking for defined objectives such as an example of a food safety objective " reduce our foreign material contamination complaints by 10% by December 2015. Is this true?
Yes, SQF is pushing "SMART" objectives. Although I can not find any reference to this in the standard or the guidance, the Advanced Practitioner test had a large number of questions on this topic.
The best reference I could find was wikipedia -
I can understand having objectives....I have objectives too, (vacation, more money, retire in style), but you wouldn't want to build those objectives into your policies, otherwise your going to be changing frequently. Or at least you should be as you accomplish them.
We just finished our annual SQF level 2 recert last week. During the closing meeting the auditor mentioned that they are making a push toward documented improvements. We used our annual document/policy reviews to show improvement this year, but she hinted that we "might" need something more substantive in the future. How far in the future? Next years re-cert, the year after? No direct information was given.
I add the objectives to my departmental annual review - I set goals for the coming year such as reducing complaints by 10%, raising GMP scores from amber to green etc - this is documented and signed off by the site management team. At the same time I also review the objectives from the previous year and if I have not met them I write a paragraph explaining the failure to meet the target.
I had my last SQF audit a month ago and the auditor was happy wih this and said it was in line with the expectations.
S
when we went through the sqf transition in 2012 our gap auditor said that you need continuous improvement in your statement, that's was fine. But you also need to state goals to prove you have continuously improved, because if you don't have any goals to beat you can't say you got better. I just have a second document called "goals for continuous improvement" and that has worked well
The way I go about it is trending items you have to compile this information any ways so you may as well use it.
2014 had 2 CARS which is less than the 8 in 2013
2014 had 250 downtime hours compared to 350 in 2013
2014 had zero rodent catches compared to 10 in 2013 due to doors being fixed
2014 we started a maintenance department like planned
2014 started using 2ply tp for worker satisfaction and proper personelle sanitation (jk we still use 1ply harharhar also I don't monitor the sanitation of our employees butts)
etc etc its pretty easy
I can't imagine the need for quantifying continuous improvement goals in your company's posted Management Commitment statement. That belongs in your Annual Management Review in my opinion.
In the policy it will have waffley statements about commitment to customer satisfaction, driving down nonconformance, continuous improvement etc.
The policy does not normally quantify the waffle e.g. we are going to reduce customer complaints by 10% etc.
What you need to do is deconstruct the policy waffle and put each measurable item on a spreadsheet with last year’s performance (maybe by month and total) and then track this year’s performance by month and include targets (objectives for improvement).
These target areas and targeted improvements should be agreed with senior management and relevant responsible personnel. The targets should be communicated to employees and performance should be monitored, updated and reported throughout the year.
Responsible persons should work on projects and improvement activities in an attempt to achieve the targets. At the end of the year maybe at management review results should be reviewed and the cycle of planning for the next years targets begins.
The simple Plan, Do, Check, Act Demming cycle.