Annual Management Review vs. Internal Audit?

Hello everyone,

We are going for SQF certification soon and we are finishing up the last of our documentation requirements for the desk audit. But we still have a few things to cover which brings me to the following question/confusion:

I am a bit confused at differentiating between the Annual Management Review (Doc. Code 2.1.3) and the Internal Audit (Doc. Code 2.5.5).

We modified the SQF Checklist to be more concise and completed our internal audit. This went through all of the SQF elements with statements of "evidence" as to how we have documents or procedures supporting the elements of the code in its entirety.

Now with the annual management review, I have read previous posts on the forum and the guidance document. I am aware of the sections the guidance specifies (policy manual, internal/external audits, complaints etc..). Then I read on the forum that some SQF users have documented this management review as a checklist... seems similar to what we did for the internal audit.

My question is, can someone help clarify the difference between the two sections and more importantly, how did you document the annual management review? As written paragraphs, another checklist...?

Thank you for your help!

Jenna

About nine years ago we started designing and developing SQF systems for companies and all we ever put together for the annual management review was  a statement page that is signed off by those involved in the 1-2 day review of the entire SQF and related system documents, externals, etc.

We never got into checklists or anything else elaborate and every single auditor has accepted this process.

I guess one can make it as involved as they want but this is what works for us.

As to Internal Audits, we customize an internal audit schedule based on the facility, what they do, how they do it, etc. 

The Internal Audit program that we just finished does use checklists for each internal audit type such as:

Pre-Op

Transporters (they have their own fleet of trucks)

Transporter Mechanical (the truck maintenace and repair shop onsite)

Packaging storage building

Welds

Pest Control devices

etc.

Pre-Op is once a day at about 4am

and then we grid out the schedule for each type of audit with a cross functional team doing them - Welds is a new one for us, in this facility their are a lot of them.

Some are weekly, some monthly, some quarterly, etc.