Temporary Repairs on Packaging Company for BRC Accrediation
I am facing an issue with a company I inspected for hygiene and its prerequisites, as a consultant, to become BRC certified. On the production line (while the packaging material is open) there are several temporary repairs with paper tape, as well as cracked plexiglas covers that the company can't find any other way to resolve at this time. I thought about setting either a daily or weekly inspection so that they can be inspected for integrity and a reference photo next to each temporary repair, so that integrity can be checked against that. As a solution do you think it would be acceptable with the proviso that at some point in time there are no temporary repairs and what frequency would be best to set the inspection? Could they also use tape of a certain colour so that it is clearly visible if a piece is gone?
Greetings Katerina,
This is going to depend entirely on the auditor. However, as it is biggest chances are a N/C will be raised, as there is no other step (e.g. X-ray) that can detect a broken piece and the frequency should be at least twice a day, maybe more, depending how long the production lasts.
A better temporary solution I can suggest would be covering the plexiglass with a special film for protection against breakage, usually used for the windows in production areas etc. The integrity checks will be in addition to this until you find a permanent solution.
Regards!
Alternatively if you have a register of temporary repairs and these are checked on a regular basis, some auditors will accept this, based on the company attempting to prevent any contamination whilst a permanent repair is completed.
Hi,
I would prepare a risk assessment (a good tool to prove the point and reduce the risk) and a list of recent (6-12 months) non-conformances (I hope you had 0, related to paper tape or plastic).
Based on the risk assessment I would get QA to audit (daily, weekly, monthly) all affected points. To reduce risk of further cracks, mark cracked lines/plastics with red permanent marker to have the evidence of checks.
This will give a plenty of monitoring and control evidence. I have attached a risk assessment
;)