1 reply to this topic

[LPali]

Hi all,

 

My company has third party manufacturers that are producing on our own label, up to this moment the technical approval of these sites has been practically inexistent, we get specs from the suppliers, approve the artwork and that was it, this was mostly managed by NPD overseen by technical. 

 

As I have been promoted to a more senior position in the technical team I want to shift this and start having more input for our own due diligence. My previous job was in a UK retailer and I understand how we were taking a lot of steps to protect our brand from a supplier management, with an approval process and auditing. Historically the technical team in this place was responsible of the site focusing on BRC (which our third party suppliers are out of scope) and customer audits.

 

As a minimum I would like to implement an approval system for our third party manufacturers that is equal to the one we have for our ingredients suppliers but also try to do some kind of auditing, this will require negotiation as auditing suppliers will cost money and we are a small company.

 

What are people experiences on approving suppliers that producing on your brand and what kind of systems do you have in place?  

[GMO]

To be honest your experience in retail will far surpass mine but I would adopt the same approach retailers do and resource it accordingly.  I'd pull together a plan for this and share it with your senior leadership team as it will probably need resource.

 

So things I'd include are:

 

• Minimum GFSI certified grade A or equivalent for non BRCGS programmes with full report sharing from the site.
• Depending on the risk in the product I'd also do some level of visit focused on food safety, hygiene and authenticity.  I'd probably focus this each time rather than repeating their GFSI and go deep on certain areas you have risk assessed are likely to be concerns (look at previous year's audits and as you grow your relationship you can refine this.)  So for example, if they process several allergens but don't have barcode verification systems, then you know that's going to be higher risk for you.
• On the above point, it's worth sharing with the senior team how much support you will need from them.  For example, your procurement team may be able to put pressure on them that you can't to invest.  Retailers do this all the time with manufacturers.
• Then I'd also be certain to be on site or a member of the team is with any preproduction trials and launches.
• I'd pull together a joint food safety and quality plan (get the supplier to do the leg work) which captures all of the improvements agreed which you can then regularly review when you or others are on site for audits or launches.

 

Per supplier that's probably 2 days auditing a year and 2 days per launch plus a bit of admin.  You can then work out what resource you have and if you need to ask for additional support. But even if you had one withdrawal in a year, that support would pay for itself.