I have an issue (one of the many issues I talk about here). Because I always like to hear it out from different people.
We are mid size spice and herb manufacturer. They were a lot worse than they are now but have been improving. I took over Quality Management recently and I am trying my best to improve many areas, We are SQF certified.
So this is the issue. We have been packaging product into smaller packages from large boxes we receive from our suppliers. These products are herbs and spices. I have received two customer complaints complaining about foreign material. I went to investigate and found the root cause being that the product is coming in like this from our suppliers. Although supposedly they are approved suppliers. foreign material like plastics, hair, rocks...etc (stuff that cannot be metal detectable). I went to the floor and found boxes of packages the employees found to have foreign material (they visually saw them and took them off the lines). Now it is possible the employees could miss a few packages. Another employee told me when he opens the raw material box, he finds all sorts of foreign material, so I know for a fact that this is coming inside our facility from the supplier like this! Sooo we know the root cause right now. The issue is the purchasing manager we have. She kept arguing with me saying she will not go to our suppliers to argue with them about this issue. Me as the QA Manager informed her we must, because Supplier Controls are a PC we have in place, our raw material should go in our facility in every perfect way. She kept going on about how its an "our employee's" faults. My argument and prod manager's arguemtn is that Its not efficient to have our employees inspect EVERY single box that comes from supplier. Product should come from an APPROVED SUPPLIER WITH ZERO DEFECTS. PERIOD. I'ts definitely a challenge when the employees around you that play a critical role in your Food Safety System are this ignorant.
Has anyone been through anything like this before?