Lack of traceability during re-work

Hi everyone,

I work as a QA Officer at a company that produces tofu.

We make both white tofu and a marinated tofu (which is white tofu marinated in soy sauce).

There have been many underweight white tofu recently and my boss would like to re-work them by slicing them and making them into our marinated tofu.

The issue here is that he wants to re-work white tofu which have been made on different days/batch numbers.

I told the boss that doing that will mean that there will be no way to trace the products original batch number AND if in any case there was a problem on the one of the batches of the white tofu that is re-worked, the entire batch of marinated tofu would also have to be discarded.

My boss thinks the likelihood of this happening is low and he'd still 'take the risk' of using 7 different batches of white tofu to produce the marinated product.

What do you guys think of this?

We're certified under SQF Level 3.

Hi, JHJ;

It's not uncommon to do this, however just make sure your policy is as robust as your practice. A few things you will need to accomplish for pos. release:

• Make sure you have a HACCP plan for rework (sounds crazy, but many companies neglect this large detail)
• Create a 'work order' which lists all inputs into this new 'batch/lot'. This 'work order' accompanies all production, inspection, and shipping records.
• Ensure that the finished goods are subject to all inspection and analysis (sec. 2.5).

Here is an example of a 'work order' we use at our facility:

Work Order.docx   13.83KB   124 downloads

"What do you guys think of this?"

I echo what Slab said.  Also, Topps Meat is no longer in business.  They had a rework recall problem.