SQF 2.1.2.1, Level 3
I'm curious to what extent you need to go to for identifying which people in your organizational chart have responsibility for Food Safety? Because you could really fight that pretty much every person has some role in Food Safety from management through to front line workers. Are you just highlighting the people who are essential in implementing the system or All who may impact Food Safety? Looking for any feed back for the way people handle this in SQF audits.
Thank You!
Kate
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For the organizational chart we focused on those with authority to initiate action, such as ...
President
Plant Mgr - Asst Plant Mgr - QA Mgr - Production Mgr - Facility Mgr - Raw Product Mgr
For 2.1.2.7 - We addressed with the following statement...
All personnel received job descriptions along with training material. All job descriptions contain the following statement:
It is your responsibility to report any and all, major or minor food safety problems to personnel with authority to initiate action.
It satisfied the auditor for initial certification and recertification
We have an in-plant tv system in all the breakrooms, where we run a powerpoint presentation that updates daily. One of the things that we have on there is the org chart to show who is responsible - from the president down to all mixer/packers. We also have a list broken down in to whom to report issues to immediatley and their cell phone numbers.
Hi Kate,
We just completed an SQF development project at a pet food company in the states and their organizational chart shows every single person on it as being responsible for food safety. It just worked out that way. We have also seen and developed charts that had a number of folks that were outside of the food safety core group that did not have a responsibility for food safety such as exterior grounds managers, export managers, etc. Job descriptions many times dictate the responsible parties.
Working on one now, again where everyone in the small company wears many hats, thus all of them have responsibility for food safety and have another that is a large company that deals in not only food but also non-food distribution thus the company chose to develop an SQF specific organizational chart.
Most times, most people have an area of responsibility for food safety.
We created a matrix:
Job Function/Title Current Name Food Safety Responsibilities Quality Responsibilities Contact Info Back-up Person
We refer to job titles in the various documents: Food Safety Assignments, Business Continuity, Recall, Traceability, etc.
By referring to this matrix, we saved a lot of time by avoiding having a different list in each document. We simply referred to job titles in the documents.
That really depends on the auditor. In my previous workplace I only identified the managers and supervisors who have control over various aspects of SQF within their department/process. It was OK by that auditor. In my current facility, we are just seeking our first SQF certification, the auditor rejected this concept in our desk audit and told me I had to include all personnel as having responsibility in "implementing and maintaining the SQF system".
I do agree with the latter case. To err on side of caution make sure all employees have training and understanding of the SQF system (overall) and how it applies to what they do. When doing this it really helps drive home the importance of what they do on a regular basis as to the impact it can have with the end product(s).