9 replies to this topic

[gracewins]

Hello everyone,

 

I am a new practitioner and work in a very small food manufacturer, and we are SQF certified. We have a customer that would like to conduct supplier audit at our facility, but the senior management team is restricting on what documentation i am permitted to show. 

Is there a requirement or standard, other than proprietary reasons, that would allow us to refuse to show   

[Scotty_SQF]

My experience for customer audits has been I show them only what they absolutely would need to see to check off their list.  You are GFSI certified, that should be enough for them to know you have your ducks in a row.  I always went by a rule of thumb, don't openly share documents, only share if they specifically ask to see a document or record.  For example if they would ask 'Can I see your SOP for Customer Complaints?', etc.  When they come in have them sign a confidentiality agreement.  Most auditors do follow a code that they will not share details. If there is a document or record that you would no want to share do to proprietary reasons, then simply say that to the customer auditor.  

[gracewins]

Thank you so much for your response. I greatly appreciate it. 

[SQFconsultant]

For us, it depends on who is doing the audit - if it is a customer direct audit where our customer is sending in their QA Manager or another employee is coming then it is a very restrictive audit, the fact that we are SQF certified plus a bunch of other certifications should be sufficient. For customer direct audits their employees and/or owner is required to sign an NDA.

 

If they are having a 3rd party Auditor come in we follow a slightly (less restrictive) process, there is no requiement for an NDA as (having been an Auditor myself) Professional Auditors follow a unwritten but very well understood code of silence - fact is when you are doing 5-7 audits a week I used to remember the faces, but everything else was a blur.

 

By the way, 24 years ago when I first became an SQF Auditor the idea was if you got SQF certified that ONE audit (or any GFSI Scheme audit) was meant to knock out the need for having to have multiple audits conducted by customers.  Well, I guess that was the dream.

[jfrey123]

By the way, 24 years ago when I first became an SQF Auditor the idea was if you got SQF certified that ONE audit (or any GFSI Scheme audit) was meant to knock out the need for having to have multiple audits conducted by customers.  Well, I guess that was the dream.

 

That's what I was led to believe when I got into the game 12 years ago, but we've all seen how that has gone...

 

To the OP, there are no specific requirements that you show a customer anything.  From a GFSI standpoint, I guess someone could argue that the standards calling for you to meet all customer requirements could apply, but it'd be a helluva stretch to twist that language to say you're required to fully open your books to your customers if management doesn't want to. 

 

If senior management is against showing the customer certain docs, then that's a business decision that could affect your sales relationship.  Ultimately, it's their call.

[kingstudruler1]

 

 

If senior management is against showing the customer certain docs, then that's a business decision that could affect your sales relationship.  Ultimately, it's their call.

essentially my thought.   You dont have to show them anything.   They dont have to buy your products.   

[beautiophile]

 

 

We have a customer that would like to conduct supplier audit at our facility, but the senior management team is restricting on what documentation i am permitted to show. 

 

This always looks like a battle and who is dominant here.

When the biggest customer (~45% of revenue) comes to audit my company, we even show them more details and are more transparent than in BRC audits.

With others, we actually lead what they can see.

[Tony-C]

Hi gracewins,

 

I want the customer on my side, I want to be as open and honest with them as possible. If you are restricting what customers can see then they may take the view that you are trying to hide something, and as kingstudruler1 has posted ‘They don’t have to buy your products’. Last time I heard, businesses make money by having paying customers and keeping customers happy is important.

 

So, this situation needs to take into consideration the importance of your customer to your business and if you are supplying them your own-branded products or producing a customer-branded product and who is going to conduct the audit.

 

What sort of documentation are you being restricted from showing to the customer and why?

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony

[MlissaB]

There are some other things to keep in mind as well.

 

Are you privately owned or public? I work for a privately owned company and that goes a long way in telling customers we won't share things with them based on that. We will share information that is specific to them and their product but not other customers.

 

I will echo what another poster shared and that is that it also greatly depends on the size of the customer and the relationship we have with them. 

[AtomicDancer]

We share the Policies (written to be a high level overview without specifics), but not the SOPs (with all the details). We've created generic HACCP flows to share with customers and keep the in depth HACCP flows for the SQF, FDA and WSDA Auditors. 

 

What I've found is customer audits are looking at how readily we can answer a question and how clean our facility is, not how in depth our documents are (that's why we are SQF Certified).