5 replies to this topic

[Duke]

All,

     What are the next steps if you fail a the BRC audit? How soon can you take the audit again? Will our customers be notified of the failure? 

 

Duke

[Jpainter]

From my understanding if you have an unsatisfactory score, you will be placed on intensified monitoring where in you will be audited every 6 months rather than yearly. If this is your initial BRC audit however, they may refuse certification, or give you a conditional certification. As far as customer notification, I am not entirely sure but its not something you want to try to hide from your customers. Was this your first audit to get GFSI certified, or is this an annual audit for re-certification?

[Charles.C]

from BRC8 -

 

Critical non-conformities or a combination of non-conformities resulting in non-certication

In some circumstances the number or severity of non-conformities raised at the audit prevents the site from being certicated following that audit. This will be the case where:
•  a critical non-conformity is raised and/or
•  a major non-conformity against the statement of intent of a fundamental clause is raised and/or
•  the number or type of non-conformities exceeds the limits for certication, as per Table 1.

The grading of non-conformities will be reviewed by the independent certication process of the certication body as soon as possible aer the audit. Where the review conrms that a certicate cannot be awarded, the site will be required to undertake another full audit before assessment for certication.

Due to the nature and number of non-conformities, it is unlikely that these non-conformities can be addressed and fully eective improvements implemented and established within a 28-calendar-day period – although there may be some exceptions.
Therefore, the re-audit shall not take place any earlier than 28 calendar days from the audit date.

Where this occurs at a certicated site, certication must be immediately withdrawn.

It is a requirement of some customers that they shall be informed when their suppliers have a critical non-conformity identied or fail to gain certication. In such circumstances the company shall immediately inform its customers and make them fully aware of the circumstances. Information on the corrective actions to be taken in order to address the non-conformities will also be provided to customers where required.

 

[Tony-C]

Hi Duke,

 

 

Welcome to the IFSQN forums.

 

Charles has covered this off, the main concern here would be if you are already a certificated site - certification must be immediately withdrawn. Customer notification is based on who your customers are, for example the bigger retailers usually require notification of the failure. I would probably be telling them anyway but have a corrective action plan in place and have corrected any major/critical conformities and be communicating this.

If you are not certificated then the failure is worrying but probably something you can keep internally. Be interesting to know more details of the reasons for failure.

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

[pHruit]

If you're sharing your certificates/reports direct with customers via the BRC directory then they may be notified - not 100% sure as not failed an audit / had a supplier fail an audit, but I know that our customers get an automated email advising when our certificate and/or report changes or is renewed, and we receive the same for our suppliers.

As per other posts, this is not something you should be actively trying to hide from clients as that will only weaken your position. I'd be contacting them as soon as you can, with at least an outline of how you're planning to address whatever caused the failure.

You may also need to talk through with your commercial colleagues - I know that a significant number of our larger customers now have contractual clauses that require immediate notification of any change in grade, and allow them to immediately cancel any and all contracts with us if our grade drops below a B.

[GMO]

 What are the next steps if you fail a the BRC audit? How soon can you take the audit again? Will our customers be notified of the failure? 

 

I would say it depends on whether you make branded products or retailer branded (own brand) products.  Either way it's not good as the score is public (albeit you need to search for it) and likely to have commercial impacts but for retailer branded (i.e. where it's their name on the packaging), you'd have to tell them and I'd be shocked if they didn't move the business pretty much immediately unless you can convince them it was a complete aberration. 

 

The other consideration is that other compliance standards may hang off BRC, e.g. Red Tractor so you could lose more than one certification.

What did happen?