Supplier Assurance in Food Manufacturing

Introduction

Supplier assurance updates can fairly time-consuming, but maintaining proper oversight of your supply chain is a key mitigation process against raw material processing risks – so well worth the effort.

We’ve signposted to a collection of resources that will be helpful in quickly alternating between assurance platforms. In this post, we also make some observations about assurance schemes, and their role in supply chain risk mitigation.

As we dive into the topic, you may also like to check out The Food Industry Hub Signposting Service, which presents a broader collection of food industry resources than are included in the scope of this post.

You will also be interested to know that we offer software for food manufacturers – with management systems specially tailored to the food manufacturing industry.

The following is a selection of resources chosen for their value as supplier assurance resources.

Supplier Assurance Through Voluntary Assurance Schemes

Voluntary assurance schemes play an important role over the food supply chain, in that they form a trust signal between buyer and seller. You can make purchases from food processors with a reasonable degree of confidence in their assurance processes by virtue of the fact that they are able to demonstrate their internal assurance processes at audit. There are checks and balances built into the system, with auditor competency and independence being enforced across accredited auditing bodies.

The international supply chain implications of this are incredible. The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) Recognised Standards actually present a framework for food processing standards that are highly-regarded enough to facilitate international supplier approval processes – practically nullifying the need for food manufacturers to carry out second party audits.

Where it was once common for food manufacturers to email each of their suppliers annually for updated assurance certificates, verification against an assurance directory presents efficiency advantages, as well as reducing exposure to fraudulent assurance certificates.

Supplier Assurance Leading into Supplier Approval

Supplier approval processes depend on risk assessment, and will almost always regard certification to a voluntary assurance scheme as being a risk mitigator. In fact, for the purpose of compliance with supplier approval requirements for GFSI, supplier approval conditions can be met exclusively by virtue of the supply site being certified to any GFSI scheme.

By regularly verifying the certification status of your suppliers across applicable assurance directories, you can be assured of the fact that your suppliers have been able to successfully demonstrate the implementation of quality assurance systems at their most recent audit. It’s very much like having an MOT for each supplier – on the date of the inspection, the requirements were found to have been met.

This is transformative compared to the alternative (of not having assurance schemes), but each food manufacturer should carry out their own risk assessments to determine whether any further approval requirements would be appropriate in each case.

Supplier assurance is fundamental to food safety, and is recognised as a prerequisite programme for the HACCP system – so it’s critical for food manufacturers to ensure robust assurance and approval processes are in place.

In Summary

Assurance schemes exist across the global food ecosystem – governing concerns such as quality assurance and ethical or sustainability initiatives.

Regularly interacting with supplier assurance databased such as the BRCGS Directory and FSSC22000 Directory can contribute supplier assurance evidence into your supplier approval processes.

Further Resources

Food Industry Hub serves the food industry with a range of digital resources for the benefit of both commercial food manufacturers and food industry professionals.

For food manufacturers, we offer integrated management systems that give every user a direct interface with your QMS.

For food industry professionals, we provide an extensive signposting service in addition to informational content we hope you’ll find useful as you face new professional challenges. We have very ambitious plans to expand the range of services offered, and currently present informational content on management, safety and quality, and professional success.