SQF Quality Code Certification
Hello everyone,
my company has decided to go a step further and earn our Quality certification, with that being said i ran through the elements required to obtain that certification and it runs with just about everything we are already doing.
I noticed the major difference is in the Food quality plan (2.4.3). There is new elements in there that I'm still trying to familiarize myself with but having some trouble trying to come up with a quality plan.
We only manufacture plastic bottles and our customers provide everything else to get them shipped to where they belong, then once they reach their destination they get filed with a product. with that being said do i still need to know what they will get filled with even if all we do is ONLY manufacture the bottles?
Another challenge i have ran into is trying to come up with a sensory evaluation program. does anyone have any advice or have something similar that could help me figure out how to apply this to plastic bottles?
Hi,
We have a sensory evaluation policy. It is completed each morning or at the change over of any products. Ours is based off of smell, taste, and visual aspects. We product no nicotine, no tobacco products though. I would assume ( i try not to assume very often because it makes an ass out of you and me) that it can be tailored to your product though.
You could visually inspect the first bottles off of each line (or however often you want) and look for warped sections/cracks/breaks/etc, perform a hands on inspection -looking for weakness in bottles or strength of bottle, and you could even smell them- should they have a strong melted plastic smell or hardly none at all?
Write it out and tailor it to your program then compare to the guidance provided (if any is provided) or find guidance in a different certification body and go that route so that you can base it off of something so when your audit comes you at least have something to work with. Or just ask the auditing company?
I agree with the hands-on inspection of finished bottles. Specifically, is the resin distributed evenly and are they the correct weight?
We had a period of time where our bottle supplier was sending us quite a few defective bottles, they didn't look right because of the distorted distribution of the resin and some were the wrong weight. I was impressed by the corrective action performed by our supplier, they identified the cause of the issue and had us return the defective bottles to use as visual aids when training employees.
both of these responses have been extremely helpful and has given me a place where I can start to make a sensory plan! thank you guys so much!!
I just want to point out that your CQP can be something other than product inspection. I have worked in a facility where our receiving checklist was a CQP as we felt it important to verify our raw materials met our standards. We also had a CQP for compiling all of the production paperwork into a packet at the end of the day to ensure all records were present and accounted for.
We implemented visual and manual inspection at all stages of our process form intake through every step of the process through shipping. Accuracy (as has been mentioned) is a quality aspect. Our shipping goes through 3 separate stages to ensure accuracy: Order is picked by one person, staged by another then loaded by a third person. We had one pallet of product incorrectly shipped in the last 5 years. We do quality checks on everything from continuous visual checks, a sampling every 15 minutes to 100% quality checks every hour. We make over 2100 different products and have between 3 and 12 customer complaints per year. Most of the complaints are not founded or dismissed after a conversation with our QM and Customer Experience due to finding the issue occurred at their store(s). We had 1 external CA last year. We were level 3 the second year of certification and have had the Quality certification when it changed. For packaging it's pretty basic and easy to achieve, you probably already have most of it in place already anyway. You'll need to create your HAQCP plan but we just adapted our HACCP plan to quality. Then just write it in to your Quality Manual.