5 replies to this topic

[mtelander]

Hello Quality Peeps,

   Does anyone have or utilize audit requirements or a contract of some sort that you send you to anyone that wants to come audit your facility? Probably just customers instead of third parties or regulatory bodies. For example, if a new customer wants to come audit your facility, do you have requirements that you send them such as requiring a detailed agenda, not having more than one audit in a week, etc?

 

If anyone has something like this or a template they would be willing to share? I am working on a proposal for our 2026 audit season

[MDaleDDF]

We don't have anything like that, but it's rare for us to onboard a customer large enough that I'd let them audit me anyway.   Small to medium customers come and go, but I wouldn't let them in my building.  You've got to order quite a large amount to get an audit out of us, or we'd be having audits all the time.   Those kind of customers have to be content with my cert (which is supposed to be enough for anyone anyway).

 

If someone wants to buy enough I'd let um in, I'll pretty much let um do their thing, whatevs.   

[SHQuality]

In the companies I've worked for only the major A customers were allowed to come in for a customer audit, so this was basically restricted to massive retailers.

 

However your mention of a restriction "not having more than one audit in a week" is off. Whether it is a regular certification audit or a customer audit, I wouldn't allow anyone to audit more than once a year unless there is a specific food safety issue that is causing severe issues for the customer in question. If this were to happen more than once a week, I'd have bigger fish to fry than audit compliance.

 

I would require customers who want to audit my facility to plan their audit at least 1 month in advance, I'd require them to provide a detailed agenda and I would limit audits to a minimum order quantity. If I was in a factory that regularly shuts down, I'd make sure they come to audit when the factory is actually actively running.

[jfrey123]

However your mention of a restriction "not having more than one audit in a week" is off. Whether it is a regular certification audit or a customer audit, I wouldn't allow anyone to audit more than once a year unless there is a specific food safety issue that is causing severe issues for the customer in question. If this were to happen more than once a week, I'd have bigger fish to fry than audit compliance.

 

Agree with everything SHQ is saying, but to clarify this bold part:  I think OP is referring to telling your customers that you don't want to schedule yourself more than one audit a week with whomever.  Essentially reserving the right to tell a customer, "Sorry, we've already scheduled an audit with another customer or regulator that week, so we will not permit you to also come audit."

 

For the OP, I would just simply take what criteria you want to enforce, throw it on company letterhead in a notice type format, and most importantly get company leadership to sign off on it.  If you want to reserve on-site audits for only your most important customers, add an annual minimum spend requirement (either historical spend or contracted forecast is a smart way to include this, in case a YUGE new customer wants to come see how the sausages are made). 

 

Making them send an agenda/copy of the standard they want to use is smart as well.  Back at my old spice plant, the worst customer audit I received was someone coming in from an organic fruit sauce pouching company, declare they were auditing us against the Campbell's standard requirements, and then get mad the company we were co-processing for wasn't making us treat the spices as if they were intended for baby formula.  Suffice to say, having the standard ahead of time helps avoid confusion on what they're expecting.

 

Lastly, once that same spice plant had gotten their first GFSI cert, the customers kept trying to schedule audits.  So ownership would send a memo to them detailing that we were going to charge $2,000 per customer audit, limited to 1 day, with no guarantees we would be actively running "their" product.  Couple of customers still went for it, but suddenly the rest all agreed that our GFSI audit and cert would suffice.  Make them pay for wasting your time and the smaller customers will probably back off.

[SHQuality]

Agree with everything SHQ is saying, but to clarify this bold part:  I think OP is referring to telling your customers that you don't want to schedule yourself more than one audit a week with whomever.  Essentially reserving the right to tell a customer, "Sorry, we've already scheduled an audit with another customer or regulator that week, so we will not permit you to also come audit."

Ah, that makes sense. If that is indeed what the OP intended, then I totally agree with that approach.

[GMO]

Just a little aside...

 

Some retailers in the UK will only leave a site if an unannounced GFSI auditor turns up. NOT if another retailer auditor turns up (many of whom also do unannounced audits.)

 

This can mean that you have more than one audit in one day and cannot refuse as it's part of your contract. Three in one day was our record. We passed them all. Fortunately.