3.12 CUSTOMER FOCUS AND COMMUNICATION
The company shall ensure that any customer-specific policies or requirements are understood, implemented and clearly
communicated to relevant staff and, where appropriate, suppliers of raw materials, packaging and services.
Interpretation
In order to ensure that customer expectations are met, a structured approach to addressing their requirements must be
established. The Standard does not expect the site to contact every customer to determine whether new policies exist, but where
a customer has made specific requirements known then the site must have systems in place to:
• ensure relevant staff are aware of the customer-specific requirements
• implement these requirements into their operations, policies and procedures
• appropriately communicate the information to relevant raw material suppliers; for example, the requirement to use only
free-range eggs would need to be understood by all raw material suppliers providing egg-containing materials.
CLAUSE REQUIREMENTS
3.12.1 Where a company is requested to follow specific customer requirements, codes of practice, methods
of working etc., these shall be made known to relevant staff within the site and implemented.
Interpretation Customer requirements
Many customers have specific requirements relating to product safety, quality and legality and the site
needs to ensure they are aware of, and understand these (e.g. by retaining copies of relevant
customers’ policy documents or service-level agreements).
The customer requirements will need to be implemented by the site, for example by incorporating into
the relevant working practices or site procedures, or inclusion into raw material and product
specifications.
3.12.2 Effective processes shall be in place for communicating customer-specific requirements to the
suppliers of raw materials and services as applicable.
Interpretation Communication of customer requirements to suppliers of raw materials and
services
Where compliance with a customer’s requirements will be dependent on activity further down the
supply chain, the company must have a mechanism for communicating the requirements to the
relevant suppliers of raw materials and services.
There must be a record of the communication, for example by incorporating the information raw
material specifiations or service-level agreements, or minutes of review meetings in which the
requirements are agreed.
There should also be a mechanism to ensure that any changes to the requirements are communicated
and understood.
This seems to me to be fairly straight forward:
1. Determine customer requirements (if any).
2. Determine if your policies and procedures already comply with customer requirements.
3. If not, modify your policies and procedures (or write addendums).
4. Train relevant staff on customer requirements and document.
5. Insert something in your Supplier Management program that says that you will review customer requirements every X period and inform suppliers of any changes.
6. Inform suppliers of raw materials and services of any customer requirements that will affect them (document).
HTH,
Marshall
