Quality Issues with enrobed chocolate products
Hi guys.
Just experiencing an ongoing complaint from a customer in regards to our biscuits and enrobing. The biscuits are round and filled - shelf life is 12 months. When the biscuits pass through the enrobing tunnel, due to the shape some have windows where the chocolate has not coated properly. The windows are approximately 5mm long x 2mm tall.
We PHYSICALLY cannot prevent this from happening. This is not a food safety issue - customer is arguing this is a quality issue. However i go into the store to buy Cadbury bars and multiple other brands and every. single. brand. has windows on their enrobing.
I am going to lose my mind from this - about 12% have windows and when were producing 30,000 units at a time they expect the 12% to be rejected. Is this unreasonable?
Have you agreed a spec including a defect tolerance with this customer? Could your process allow for QC to reduce the number of imperfect biscuits from 12% to, say, 7% or maybe even 5% if there was extra investment in personnel or equipment? I have to admit that if I was receiving 3,600 out of every 30,000 units that weren't up-to-scratch (in my opinion as customer) I'd be speaking to my supplier to get that down somewhat.
You might think your customer is fussy, and I'll bet they are, but if there's a discrepancy between the supplier's and customer's expectations then some kind of agreement somewhere in the middle needs to be reached. And if it can't be, maybe it's best to part ways- the amount of aggro involved here needs to be worth it!