How to generate a Document Control Policy for SQF compliance?
What's the best way to start a Document Control Policy from scratch for SQF compliance?
What's the best way to start a Document Control Policy from scratch for SQF compliance?
Hi MMC,
Perhaps you meant "Procedure" ?
The first thing you should do is make sure you understand the standards that you are targeting, SQF in this case. Read clauses related to document control carefully.
Is there some particular reason that you want to write your document control procedure from scratch. The reason I ask is that there are lot of good documents you can use as a template floating around. Why reinvent the wheel?
Don't make it more complicated than it has to be. Just make sure the procedure is sustainable. Make sure your procedure adheres to the standards and that the procedure is sustainable for your organization.
If you are writing either policy or procedure by all means use one that already exists but choose it well, one that most closely fits what you already do, then correct it to fit your actual methods. If you are creating the document control itself, I would suggest all electronic documentation with a printed "Food Safety Manual" for auditing purposes. As we wrote all of our documents (SOPs, created forms, registers etc) we created a section of a network drive to SQF Document Control and divided it with folders and sub-folders relating to the various areas of production and / or departments. We have a section for policy where we categorize and store all of the Module 2 policies and required procedures then all of our category module (we are module13 - Food Packaging Manufacturer) SOPs, Record, Registers, Forms and Work Instructions categorized by department. The way we revise is rename the newest revision with the revision number in the title, the last revision is put in an archive folder under it's parent folder. For example our system elements folder is broken into the codex headings: Parent folder 2.1, sub-folders 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3 etc. in the same main folder there is an archive folder with the same structure exactly where the replaced document is put. This eliminates the "markup" function which, in my opinion, makes the document revision confusing. Just remember to use "Save As" when you save your most current revisions and rename the document, then move the older one to it's archive folder. The procedure then just needs to reflect how we create, store, retrieve and revise them. Hope this helps. I know explanations can be confusing. If you have any other questions, please let me know.
p.s. this requires some form of terminal for all employees to access the documents or making the Food Safety Manual (and / or Food Quality Manual) available to all employees