12 replies to this topic

[QARF]

Hi,

The company that I work for i expanding their production ste installing new equipments and new automated packing line system. I am working on creating a glass and hard plastics inventory for this. There are a lot of glass panels, sensors, cable ties,conveyors, control panel /button and many other elements to this new equipments. My question is, what do you normally include in your glass and hard plastics list? Do you include everything?
We are using the FSSC22000 standard.

Thank you

[GreyeagleA]

For us we include everything on the list and we are SQF certified

[Miri]

I'm SQF.  We list everything, including the emergency exit lights over the doors (got "dinged" on that one time).

I did FSSC22000 for just one year at another company and I feel that the FSSC22000 requirements are more intense than SQF, but that is just my opinion.  

[GMO]

I'm interested on this.  For some manufacturers I've seen ALL hard plastic included, even coloured plastic which I don't think is the point and the lists get so crazy long, nobody is really checking, but I'd be curious on the views of others?

[zuoli]

Every time I go to audit suppliers, I notice that the lists for glass, hard plastic and ceramics are always lengthy. Items are easily missed, the process isn't particularly meaningful, and few people are willing to check each one individuall

[TimG]

Ok, this one to me is an area I feel industry has over complicated things. The place I am at now, the previous list (which I am still using but thinking of eliminating quite a bit from) has EVERYTHING you can think of. Even things nowhere near the higher risk areas. Head and Taillights from every forklift? The clock on the wall in maintenance? The microwave in the break room? And it gets done annually. It's obviously there just to meet code and it does absolutely nothing to minimize my risk. We do also check gauges and glass in the higher risk areas as a pre-op before each shift, which to me is the more pertinent inspection.

The annual list is just security theatre, and I hate meaningless things like that.

[GMO]

I remember a leader saying my team spent ages walking around looking at lights.

I didn't disagree with him but he had no idea of the standards we had to comply with.

 

It's complete BS and it drives me bonkers.

It drives me even more bonkers when guarding which could be lasered stainless steel is implemented with perspex, with screws through it which you just KNOW someone will overtighten in a week and crack the screen.

I suppose that's the thing.  We need to minimise it as much as possible.  But also to my mind, there is zero point having a specific list for coloured non clear plastic and I'd just include that for food contact areas in a generic prestart check sheet.  I'm not having someone ticking 100s of items but I am expecting them to check something staring at them in the bloody face.  Not guaranteed checklist or not I find.

[jfrey123]

My master glass and plastic register always included everything I could find, including on the machines.  I've always been SQF and auditors seem to really enjoy carrying a copy of this inventory sheet to go out and "find" the one item I might have missed.  At my first spice job I think it had over 1,000 items on it (spread over about 3 pages of line items, things like "Ceiling lights - 12 fixtures x 4 bulbs; 12 plastic covers" would've equaled 60 items alone but only one line item on my inspection sheet).  I took a minor my first year because of missing things like the illuminated exit signs and wall clocks.  From then on out my glass and plastic register was painfully retentive.

 

Full checks of the register were done monthly.  Daily during pre-op, equipment operators had to inspect their equipment and give a generic check off on a list that all the buttons and dials were intact.  It was effective in that we had pre-op forms mark damaged equipment, and I never found a damaged item that hadn't been previously reported.

[SHQuality]

I understand how mind-numbing checking these lists can be, but they exist for a reason. I've had to deal with a complaint for a third-party manufacturer where it turned out a foreign body that ended up in the product came from the inside of their machine, but because someone failed to include that item on the checklist, no one bothered to check it was still intact until I asked about it because of the complaint.

 

I also remember a similar issue with a bolt ending up in a product (also at a third-party location), because it came lose and just happened to be positioned over the conveyer with open product.

Regular checks and machine maintenance can avoid a lot of hassle later on.

[GMO]

I understand how mind-numbing checking these lists can be, but they exist for a reason. I've had to deal with a complaint for a third-party manufacturer where it turned out a foreign body that ended up in the product came from the inside of their machine, but because someone failed to include that item on the checklist, no one bothered to check it was still intact until I asked about it because of the complaint.

 

I also remember a similar issue with a bolt ending up in a product (also at a third-party location), because it came lose and just happened to be positioned over the conveyer with open product.

Regular checks and machine maintenance can avoid a lot of hassle later on.

 

I agree but as you wrote yourself "mind numbing".

 

We once had an issue with glass in an ingredient but we didn't know it was an ingredient issue until later.  This was early in my career and my team did the glass and hard plastic checks. While the Head of Technical was investigating with suppliers and looking at data, I did the entire glass and hard plastic inspection of the whole site.

I found about 20 instances of damage which had been missed by my team.  Not operators, quality people.  Some were hard to see, some were sheer laziness and not actually checking.  I used stern words rather than disciplinary because if I was honest having spent the day doing it, there were some I missed myself until I looped back and double checked.  That's the problem.  It's like watching CCTV for hours on end, you physically can't do it and actually take in anything meaningful. It's just so boring.

[SHQuality]

I agree but as you wrote yourself "mind numbing".

 

[...]  I used stern words rather than disciplinary because if I was honest having spent the day doing it, there were some I missed myself until I looped back and double checked.  That's the problem.  It's like watching CCTV for hours on end, you physically can't do it and actually take in anything meaningful. It's just so boring.

I think a lot of the issues you describe can be limited by spreading the responsibility. You can have one person run around checking the entire list and make them go crazy or delegate chunks to different people to make each bit a lot easier to check carefully.

[GMO]

I think a lot of the issues you describe can be limited by spreading the responsibility. You can have one person run around checking the entire list and make them go crazy or delegate chunks to different people to make each bit a lot easier to check carefully.

 

Even then if you have a list of 1000s of items then it's not realistically going to be done well.  That was the case in my example.  The non machine items were checked by my team and spread out amongst the members.  My point is the control should start by vastly limiting the glass and hard plastic at the beginning.  So many people outside of QFS don't even think about doing that.

[kconf]

You only include the main items and not their subcomponents. The items that are in production zone and have high risks if an incident were to occur. Not every plastic item is brittle either.