SQF Level 2 audit begins on 2/7/17!

Howdy guys! I am a Quality and Food Safety Manager for a small snack manufacturing company that has had the goal of SQF certification in their sights for several years now. I came on board in 2014 and have been working ever since to bring the company up to compliance with the SQF Code.

We FINALLY scheduled our first audit, which is scheduled for Feb. 7th, 2017, which is 3 weeks from today. I'm scrambling and trying to make sure everything up to date and running through the gap assessments left and right and it's definitely stressing me out, but I'm sure everything will all be worth it provided we pass with no issues!

Our facility audit follows on March 8 and after running through the facility assessment audits, I think we are in good shape. It will just be a matter of fixing small areas in documentation from when I started as I know so much more about SQF now than I did two years ago!

A big thanks to everyone on this forum as it's provided me with useful information multiple times and helped me to quit overthinking certain areas or look at different areas under a new light. I am hoping all of this work pays off in 3 weeks and we pass our desk audit with no major issues.

Cheers!

Congratulations on your progress, let us know how it goes!

Some final advice for your audit:

1. You know your gaps, so make sure you're ready to talk about next steps to correct them if the come up during the audit. A plan already in place to fix something that's not quite ready can be the difference between a finding and a comment.

2. Relax! You're working towards certification, that means you and your company is already doing the right things. Findings don't mean you're being unsafe, they're continuous improvement opportunities.

3. Anytime the code says documentation or register, make sure you've got a great example ready to show off. For example on vendor approval get your highest risk ingredient all dialed in and paperwork clear and organized, and focus less on that one cardboard supplier who didn't provide the best documentation. Show the programs work where it really counts for food safety, even if there are gaps.

4. If you do something weird that would give someone pause (e.g. a very long sanitation interval), have a complete risk assessment with citations to cover it. Your explanations for company policy that differs from other industries or facilities pass right on by when you can show some data instead of "it's different here or not needed here".

Have fun at the QA super bowl!

Congrats on the audit!

I am also doing my first SQF audit. I have my desk audit tomorrow.....

Ideal... here is a sigh of relief... you can not fail a desk audit. They are not graded. Granted you could have CARs generated but it is the 2bd audit - the certification audit that is scored and graded.

Finished up the desk audit today, it went incredibly well! Only 9 minors and all are super trivial and easy to fix and implement. The first thing she looked at was our food safety plan and saw that it wasn't signed (or rather not "validated") because I revised it and forgot to sign it! I had it sitting on my desk for days after I revised it with the intention of having it signed by management but must have forgotten, so I was kicking myself when she pointed that out.

Otherwise it went very smoothly and she recommended that we be allowed to proceed with our facility audit, scheduled for March. It was so nice hearing her say all of our policies and procedures were very well written and organized, it really made me feel good about all the work I've put into SQF over the past year or so.

And of course thanks to IFSQN for answering plenty of stupid questions in the meantime - I'm sure I'll be here with more as I prepare for our facility audit.

Congratulations!

Heh, minors like that are frustrating. Because the amount of effort to avoid them all is huge, and turns you into a QA paperwork czar until you have enough culture change where bad documentation looks/feels "wrong" to everyone, not just you.

Get those doors sealed up and enjoy showing off your plant!

Bravo Idealdreams. Best of luck on your certification audit. 

Thanks guys! Already started on the corrective actions and will be working diligently to get everything in line for our facility audit. Our company is purchase order driven so there are some months where manufacturing happens three or four weeks a month and other months (especially the more recent months) where manufacturing happens 3 days a month. I am concerned about the gaps in our scheduled tasks, like preventative maintenance and cleaning, since there is no manufacturing and therefore nothing to maintain or clean regularly.

Congrats on your desk audit! as for the gaps in your cleaning and preventative maintenance, Make sure if you have a long time between manufacturing, that things are cleaned again before manufacture. I know there are Preoperational sheets to check off on, but there may be some airborne things like dirt or dust on the equipment.

Good Luck with the facility audit!