Unapproved Supplier purchases - Retail purchases

Hello all,

I am hoping you could help me in resolving an on-going issue we have in our small facility.

We continue to purchase raw materials (i.e. milk) from retailers because we are unable to meet minimums from distributors and vendors.

We also make some last minute purchases from retailers in order to produces samples.  We do not have a test kitchen so samples are produced on our manufacturing line.

Can anyone provide any insight or advice on how to approach this and include into our Supplier Approval Program.

Any help you could provide you be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,

BK

I've been caught in this situation before and used the following logic for concessions:

Is the milk (or whatever) processor/manufacturer the same as we use? In our case we bought wholesale dairy products from a retail manufacturer.

Do I know whether the manufacturer/processor has a GFSI certification? It you're buying the replacement from a large supermarket chain it might be the case (you could check the website).

How much due diligence has the retailer done? Large supermarket chains will usually do a lot.

Is this for a trial or a retail product? If a trial, then the risk is low

Put this together as a formal risk assessment and you can justify a concession (or not).

We use one ingredient in tiny amounts and one as a processing aid.  Both are purchased from supermarkets.  Simplest thing if what you're buying is branded is to contact the supplier and ask them for a spec.  I'd do this for both trials and normal production.  You want to understand any ingredient going into your factory.  We've found most people are pretty obliging.