5 replies to this topic

[Amandeep Kaur Kahlon]

Hello,

 

I am struggling to organize Supplier Quality Assurance  documents as we have thousands of suppliers. I need to get it done every year for SQF audit requirements and sometimes sales department suddenly stop buying or start buying from new people, without informing QA dept.

Asking to know best solutions possible??

 

If suggesting application, please mention the price as well.

 

Thank you so much in advance

[TimG]

Good morning, Amandeep.

I wanted to address one thing you mentioned:

'sometimes sales department suddenly stop buying or start buying from new people, without informing QA dept.'

I would suggest prior to jumping into a new QMS, you address this internal issue. Being SQF, I'm sure you have approved supplier PnP. What does your procedure say you must do for new suppliers? You need to address this ASAP. I would even go so far as to open an official Corrective Action and track all communications and efforts on the part of quality as you work to bring this issue into compliance. 

I've had to do it; I've had to bring the EC into it and put pressure on sales/purchasing right from the top. It sucked, but you can't ignore this one. You NEED to have communication on new suppliers (ingredients, food contact packaging) or you will get yourself a major.

[kconf]

Do what Tim says first for internal communication. I have been in this situation and it's frustrating. 

 

As for keeping records, we use tracegains. It reminds you and even sends updated docs requests to your suppliers. 

[jfrey123]

I'm over here crying about managing 118 fresh fruit and veg suppliers along with 45 non-fresh suppliers, I feel really bad for OP trying to keep track of thousands.  Granted I'm a one-man show for supplier approval, but even with a team, trying to track 1,000+ is absolutely bonkers in my mind.

 

Only suggestion that comes to mind is that you need a company culture shift.  At my corporation, we've got a team of buyers who use our finance system to issue PO's for ACH payments.  They're flat out prohibited from issuing a manual PO to a random company, they must have the supplier listed in our finance system to issue a PO.  And luckily, with some push from the CEO and execs, finance has adopted restrictions on who may request suppliers be added to the system.  For anything food or packaging related, finance MUST receive the thumbs up from me.  Buyers sometimes grab all the finance forms and get the supplier to complete them, submit them to finance, but finance loops me in immediately to run the QA approvals before they'll enter them.  It sounds to me like your management team needs to adopt some type of similar stance.

[GMO]

 

Only suggestion that comes to mind is that you need a company culture shift. 

 

Agree.  How can you genuinely manage 1000s of suppliers unless you are a retailer with a supplier assurance team and probably sub contracted auditors, vast amounts spent on bespoke systems etc?  It's unmanageable.  

[Daniel.Hebert]

Hello Amandeep,

 

I agree with Tim, in that there is no reason Sales should be jumping to new suppliers without coordinating with compliance.  I have been in that situation in the fresh fruit and vegetable industry, where sales needed to procure, as they lined up the sale in real time to the raw material on highly perishable materials.  How I approached the compliance portion first, was to let Sales understand that if the clients needed the SQF, then we were obligated to ensure that suppliers met base criteria each time (GFSI recognized certificate, allergen survey, spec, nutrition, etc).  I gave the package to sales, and indicated if we lost our certification because we weren't being responsible with even one client, we'd potentially lose 80% of our client base (which was true).  Using a financial argument was more convincing that the merits on food safety alone.  The "shoot from the hip" mentality realigned, and when they indicated to me the reality of the market, I realized, although most of the clients needed SQF, a significant minority, paying up to 40% of our revenue, couldn't care less.  To make that manageable, we segmented products into "covered by SQF" and "basic food safety only."  The company bought, sold, and sometimes processed all manner of fruits, vegetables, and wild forest foods, such as chanterelle mushrooms.  Since wild edible mushrooms were never going to make the GFSI standard, we compromised, and addressed scheduling of the production floor to ensure only "compatible" operations were on the floor at the same time.  This is not an ideal situation, but it worked, and satisfied the auditors while making focus on the 20% more manageable.  For consumer protections, we stepped up testing on nonconforming products to ensure due diligence.  

 

That said, I couldn't effectively manage the procurement side without the use of an ERP.  The ERP I currently use is NetSuite and there is an entire library of modules that are available in their library for your specific situation.  Quoting a price without context won't help you.  I'd suggest contacting ERP Buddies or someone like them (https://www.erpbuddies.com/) to align your needs with a tool that will work with your other systems, like procurement, finance, and manufacturing (as it applies).  I hope this is of some use.  Good luck.