5 replies to this topic

[Samlarios1]

Hello everyone, my company has (3) facilities which are all individually audited and have their own SQF certification. 

However, as a company, we would like to standardize our SQF Manuals/Programs. Would their be an issue with having a standardized "Corporate SQF Manual" that all facilities adopt? For example a procedure would say "Prepared By: Company SQF Team" or does it need to be specific to the site? I hope I explained that well. Thank you.

[TimG]

Plenty of places do it. Just be aware that there will be location specific documents, for example cleaning SOP's or equipment specific PM's, that you will need to maintain.

As long as the "Corporate SQF Manual" meets the code and is being followed, you will be compliant. I'm sure someone who has a system like this can give you warnings on some of the pitfalls to avoid, because I know there has to be some.

[G M]

The inherent non-specificity of SQF would probably make this do-able.  It obviously doesn't work for HACCP plans, but all the core SQF policy documents could work across similar facilities. 

 

You will still need individualized risk assessments, and probably a handful of site specific programs and policies related to differences in those location and infrastructure related risks.

[jfrey123]

My corp QA team I'm a part of oversees 12 sites, and we'd eventually like to get to a wholly issued corp manual but haven't gotten there yet.  The SOP's and programs are primarily written by us and shared to all sites to standardize things, but as of current it is up to the local facility's QA manager to issue and maintain the programs.  There are a handful of the programs which are directly issued and implemented by our corporate QA team, primarily where the activities fall to my team instead of someone local to the facility (supplier approval for example).

 

The one piece of advice I have for OP would be you still want to show the individual person who prepared/revised the changes, followed by the individual person who approved it.  The document itself can make references such as "The Corporate SQF team is responsible for x activities or y monitoring" throughout, but you'll still want to identify the specific persons who modify and control the document in the revision history.

[Scampi]

Generally speaking, module 2 could be corporate, but almost all of module 11 needs to be site specific

 

Things like management commitment, recall, etc are the easiest to make corporate 

 

We have 4 sites doing the same thing, but PC's in the haccp plan may be different depending on location, so as soon as those are different, that procedure must be site specific

 

Policy = easy for corporate

 

Procedure  = best for site specific

[GMO]

Not for SQF but I used to have two sites 11 miles apart in one company, two sites 20 miles apart in another and two sites 200m apart in a third.

ALL of them had separate systems and procedures for things which could be coordinated. For example, they had different glass and hard plastic procedures even though the controls were the same. In one of those companies, they even had different colour coding. In the end in every company I encouraged standardisation. Standardisation does not mean you do not adapt where it's needed but where it's not, absolutely have one standard. Why wouldn't you as long as people in the plants have some say in what's in it.