Quality Culture - Agents and Brokers

Hi Everyone

We have our product safety and quality culture policy in our QMS. We listed what we already have in place and our action plan for year 1 - this was a employee questionnaire to measure the culture in the business which has been completed. 

What kind of things does everyone have going forward in terms of plans? We are Agents and Brokers so not handling any goods.

Our auditor in February was keen do see other things in place by next audit

Thanks 

Posters, description of management commitment, suggestion box.

Agents and Brokers generally are small organisations and as you say you don't handle the product.

The first thing to do is to assess the outcomes of the questionnaires, are there any common themes which come up.

Have you given a questionnaire to the Directors and compared the views of the two.

As an example, a theme which came out from an A&B that I work with was the speed which the buyers were asked to put new products on the market. So we revamped the New Products Procedure to have more stages of approval involving input from buyers, sales, sales admin and technical review. This generated a feeling of greater involvement and understanding of the product rather than it being simply a catalogue number.

It is interesting that your auditor reviewed your plans, in the last 3 audits I have been involved with, the auditor never looked at Quality Culture. I think that they are not sure how to audit it as is a long term process.