Quality Certification under SQF 8.0 - added value?

I am interested in learning any opinions as whether you see value or no value to upgrading standard SQF level 2 Certification to the current Quality Code, former level 3?

Thank you, 

Mark Richardson

I'm supposed to tell you it's a great idea to do that - however after being an SQF Auditor and SQF Consultant for a combined 12 years now I see absolutely no value in doing so.

A customer may want you to do that, however I have found when you ask the customer why they want their suppliers to have it, they are unable to answer the question.

We have a long-time pizza and flatbread client that maintains a close to perfect score/grade year in and year out and had a customer "demand" the quality component be added to which we questioned him indicating that the company already maintains basically an A+ on all yearly audtis, so what's the use in have to spend the money and time on doing that to which the customer dropped the demand.

I agree with the SQFConsultant.

I think MAYBE the only time this might be useful is if the product is of very high quality or the company is very strict on quality standards? But then again, you can argue that you can still get that standard without paying the extra amount to be level 3.

(PS. Do not get me wrong, if a company does not go with level 3 I am not saying their product is of lesser quality, I am just trying to think of a situation where one may want the added quality component to their audit).

Jenna

If you already have a strong, well documented QMS, the cost to achieve it would be reasonable. It just comes down to the value to your company. For us it was a no-brainer, we already had the basis of the QMS with full records and knew that at least 4 or 5 of the national grocery chains and restaurants we produce for were leaning toward requiring it so we did it as soon as we could. For us it's money in the bank when we can show a 100% score on our Quality Audit. It's also helped us gain a lot of new business. It all depends on your specific situation.

Depends on your customer base.

I work for a company that makes food contact packaging.

We used to have AIB audits for cleanliness and ISO 9000 audits for quality.  Many of our customers wanted us to be GFSI certified for food safety.

We decided to get SQF Food Safety and Quality certification so we would only have one audit instead of two.

I've worked in Food Safety Code and now in Quality code and I see 0 Value. Unless one customer of yours comes out and requires you to do so. 

I might be a bit jaded, but aren't most certification schemes customer driven? 

At a former facility we had a few customers "require" us to get SQF 3 (this was under the previous numbering scheme). We did an analysis on time investment and weighed it against the loss of those customers business, which almost wasn't enough to even push the time spent to do the analysis. We then attempted to factor in some "cost of quality" data to see if that could add to the pro's (it didn't, every quality issue we had with sugar was minimal since we could simply remelt it as raw using the previous final product lot# as the new ingredient input).

We shelved the plan and did not lose one single customer who "required" it of us.  If a large enough customer base (or a large enough customer) required it, we would have done it. However, if we had the "well documented QMS" that Hoosiersmoker did, where the required work was minimal, we would have done it in a heartbeat. Like he says that's a no-brainer.

Waste of money as a certification. However I do still think that the "quality threat analysis" HACCP-like approach to customer complaint trending had a lot of value to us as a business to improve our products year over year in addition to just making sure they were safe.

I am so sorry I lost track of this post but wan to say thank you to you who posted in response.  We made the decision not to pursue the added level.