19 replies to this topic

[carine]

Hi everyone, 

 

I would like to ask if there any general guidelines or industry practices when it comes to allowing customers to conduct audits at our facility. 

 

For example, do companies typically set a baseline - such as the customer's annual sales volume or order size - to determine whether a customer is eligible to conduct an audit? 

 

Appreciate if anyone could share their company's approach or my best practice in this area. Thank you.  

[Laura982]

Hi Carine 

 

In my experience audits are conducted if there is no accreditation (are you accredited) and the customer isn't happy with the SAQ completed or if you have had on going issues of sending out poor quality products. Have they explained the reason for auditing you?

[carine]

yes, we are accredited. No reason was given for the audit. In this case, any reason given to reject their audit

[Laura982]

It might be worth asking why they want to audit? Are you included in all the conversations? could it be a commercial reason to understand your capabilities and opportunity to do more work with you?

[TimG]

Good morning, Carine. I absolutely set a threshold for customer audits. This is typically discussed with upper management and sales and then agreed upon by pertinent parties involved. You are going to have to find the correct balance that works for your facility and team. You might find that it's best if sales is the one that tells the customer they don't meet the criteria when a request is made below threshold, sometimes quality will have to do that.

But if you have a wide range of customers with a wide spectrum of purchase levels, you should set a threshold for audits.

[Scampi]

I'm going to play the devil's advocate

 

How much is their business worth to you?   We are audited quarterly by CFIA and annually for SQF....................we still have 3 customer audits/year and those are non negotiable------if you want that business, it's part of the package

[MDaleDDF]

Yup, we base it on how much you mean to us.   Oddly enough, it seems like the little customers squeak the most.   In my experience larger customers aren't as needy and trust the GFSI cert as proof we're walking the walk.

We don't have a specific number as a threshold, but unless you're one of our biggies, we're not doing it, and even then we push back most of the time.   I think we've had 2 or 3 customers through our building in my 20 years here?

[TimG]

Yup, we base it on how much you mean to us.   Oddly enough, it seems like the little customers squeak the most.   In my experience larger customers aren't as needy and trust the GFSI cert as proof we're walking the walk.

We don't have a specific number as a threshold, but unless you're one of our biggies, we're not doing it, and even then we push back most of the time.   I think we've had 2 or 3 customers through our building in my 20 years here?

 

I had one who purchased 2 LTL's over a 2 year period and then sent me an itenerary for their company employee to come audit my facility as well as an estimate of me paying their salary, airfare from Mexico (we were in Houston but still), and their meals/lodging.

[Andy_Yellows]

Customer audits are a pain in the neck and from your post I'm guessing these aren't on of your big ones- do they spend enough with you throughout the year to make it worth a day of your time? If not, perhaps offer them a half day audit to include a tour of the facility and a cursory glance through your critical documentation and they can take it or leave it

[jfrey123]

Current company sells to a couple of large retail customers, and they pretty much dictate they get to audit (or cutsey way of saying it is "visit") whenever they want or they'll take their millions in purchases elsewhere.

 

Back at my first spice job, we got the small company through SQF to eliminate 10+ customer audits each year.  They still got audited by a couple of the big-big customers we had, but they started telling the smaller ones that any on-site audits would only be done if they accepted a $3,500 fee to come audit us.  Couple of them agreed and went for it anyway, others decided that a few copies of our programs atop our SQF audit was suddenly acceptable.  This was 12-13 years ago and I think those companies just hadn't updated their SOP's to accept GFSI audits as part of their supplier approval.

[carine]

Hi, could you pls share ur threshold for mine reference.

Good morning, Carine. I absolutely set a threshold for customer audits. This is typically discussed with upper management and sales and then agreed upon by pertinent parties involved. You are going to have to find the correct balance that works for your facility and team. You might find that it's best if sales is the one that tells the customer they don't meet the criteria when a request is made below threshold, sometimes quality will have to do that.

But if you have a wide range of customers with a wide spectrum of purchase levels, you should set a threshold for audits.

[TimG]

Hi, could you pls share ur threshold for mine reference.

 

It's been different at each facility I've worked. It will vary depending on comfort level of ownership/management/sales, as this should be primarily a business decision. i've always based it on total purchases (volume) from the previous year.  If you have a customer that purchases 20% of your total sales annually, you're not going to want to even suggest to them that their business isn't enough to warrant a day long audit. If you have a customer that comprises <2% of your annual sales, do you really want to be tying up a day or two putting you behind on things that could be taking you away from your bigger or more profitable customers?

Edited by TimG, 22 May 2025 - 11:57 AM.

[MlissaB]

I work for a packaging manufacturer and most of the customer requirements we receive state that we need to be open to them auditing us. We generally won't say no but will push back if the requested dates are not convenient. We have also taken to stating we are open to 2nd and 3rd party audits AT THE CUSTOMER'S EXPENSE. We are already paying for GFSI (BRC) certification, if that's not good enough then you can pay for someone else to audit us.

[GMO]

I used to work in a company supplying every major retailer in the UK and several abroad.  We had a B2B customer who wanted to audit.  We explained the situation, look we supply everyone you do and they audit us directly.

 

Nope, still wanted to audit.  We did eventually manage to reduce the audit frequency though from yearly to 3 yearly.

 

By the time I left, I delegated 100% of those kind of audits and most of the retailer ones too.  

 

We had the occasional win.  Woolworths Australia agreed to audit only once a year not twice... We managed to have the same auditor audit for two schemes in one day once (although I'm partially convinced she invoiced both for a day's work).

 

Mostly I sucked it up, shared my views with the commercial team and we set a minimum contract size to warrant an audit.  But I was still audited to death.

[Dr Vu]

for me if you refuse our Audit - we cut you out

[GMO]

for me if you refuse our Audit - we cut you out

 

Ultimately that's the view most people have.

 

I think it's super old fashioned though.  If you genuinely think a company that has 80 days of audits and customer visits is going to be safer if they have 82 then crack on. But you have to accept all companies have limited resources.  If you're adding to non value add work, then you will be taking away from value add work and increasing the pressure on Technical team members which, let's face it, all of us have either burned out once or know someone close to us in Technical who has.

 

That's what you want?  Crack on.  But there are loads of better ways.

[TimG]

for me if you refuse our Audit - we cut you out

I'd respect that. I've had a few customers hit us with the 'we will have to look into other suppliers' (one facility was also not GFSI, so I could REALLY understand if a customer needed an audit) but it never ended up even making a dent in their purchase forecasts. I do recall one customer being adamant but all in all pretty cool about it, so we tried to meet them in a middle ground where I came up with a fee covering associated costs and passed that along to them. They replied back saying basically 'but that's about the price of a whole pallet of product, we only buy around 50 pallets a year. (I think it was 52, a double stacked truckload)' Which is when I believe they got the point, that we shipped several truckloads a day and they bought one truck worth a year. That's not worth me devoting a day to an audit of my facility.

[Dr Vu]

Personally i am at a point where i think GFSI  means nothing. I have visited some GFSI certified places and wouldnt touch what they make with a ten foot pole. i truly feel better if i see it myself.

 

most Big companies are breaking away from GFSI ie are adding their addendum just so they make sure  all areas are covered 

 

  if the audit is being conducted in my facility.. all i do is use volumes etc to determine the "host". If you buy one pallet then you will be hosted by QC, 10 pallets or so  - QA supervisor; big Customer or CFIA  = QA Manager; SQF and Bigger customer = SQF practitioner --- But i welcome them all 

Edited by Dr Vu, Yesterday, 08:55 PM.

[AtomicDancer]

If a customer wants to see our facility and documents, we allow it. However, we do not pay for a 3rd party auditor, we do not pay airfare, etc. If they are here during lunch, we will, as a courtesy, buy them lunch.  

Most customers that audit us are looking high level/big red flags. We run a clean facility with a high GFSI score, and rarely have findings on the customer audits. 

[GMO]

Personally i am at a point where i think GFSI  means nothing. I have visited some GFSI certified places and wouldnt touch what they make with a ten foot pole. i truly feel better if i see it myself.

 

most Big companies are breaking away from GFSI ie are adding their addendum just so they make sure  all areas are covered 

 

  if the audit is being conducted in my facility.. all i do is use volumes etc to determine the "host". If you buy one pallet then you will be hosted by QC, 10 pallets or so  - QA supervisor; big Customer or CFIA  = QA Manager; SQF and Bigger customer = SQF practitioner --- But i welcome them all 

 

It's always been thus in the UK, the retailers set up BRCGS (it used to be owned by the British Retail Consortium, hence BRC) yet the retailers themselves always had some clauses which weren't included so set up another standard or, at least Morrisons were better in setting up "BRC and..." in each section.  M&S didn't help by never accepting it.

 

I've been to lots of sites in my time. Everyone has something the auditor missed and something else I'm sure I missed.  Ultimately though you cannot audit something safe. 

 

I would have put money on my being able to spot stage management in an audit or site visit until a year ago.  I went to a site and I genuinely didn't spot it all.  It took me weeks to realise how broken the place was but just how good they were at presenting the "right" face.  That site has the highest audit results of any site I've ever been in yet has appalling culture, systems and is on the verge of a major incident.  I'm not quite at the point of thinking audits show you nothing but I'm close to it.  That's why I don't think more audits are significantly better than something that's already broken.