Discover five ways that your food production site can prepare for a Customer Audit from a Retailer or Food Service Provider.

It is hard to overstate the importance of effectively preparing for Customer Audits. After all, failing an audit or receiving a poor audit outcome could result in the following consequences for your site: 

  • Your Senior Leadership Team may receive a request to visit Customer HQ to explain the situation.
  • You may receive more visits to your site and will be under increased pressure to resolve the issues.
  • The customer may refuse to take any new deliveries, leaving you with surplus product.
  • New Product Development could be paused or even stopped completely. 
  • Customers may start a tendering process, looking for other sites to take on production, due to a lack of trust in your company.
  • If your site loses a key contract, it is possible that your business will be unsustainable. 

With this in mind, we have put together a guide to securing a successful Customer Audit. Although every Retailer and Food Service Provider is different, the advice in this article draws on our experience working with over 4,000 sites and should be a great starting point if you are looking to improve in this area. You can also click here for additional support from the Klipspringer Team.

1. Gap Analysis

When preparing for a customer audit, you need to perform a Gap Analysis. Perhaps the simplest and most effective approach is to populate a spreadsheet with the clauses of the standard you are being audited against or the customer’s Code of Practice (COP). 

Working through the spreadsheet, you need to ensure there is a suitable procedure in place for each clause, identifying any gaps. You can then address these areas of oversite before your auditor arrives. Gap Analysis should be an ongoing process, with your spreadsheet updated every time additional clauses are added to the standard or expectations are revised.  

2. Internal Audits

Another important step is to conduct internal audits of your site, covering each area of the standard or COP. This a great way to prepare for customer audits and it can also help you to prepare for other inspections such as SMETA, ISO, and BRCGS audits (if applicable).  

You should never be waiting for an auditor to visit your site to highlight areas for improvement. Instead, you and your team need to be working proactively – finding these areas before the audit takes place and correcting them in plenty of time. Click the button below to access our guide to conducting internal audits at your site.

It is worth noting that if an auditor visits your site and sees that you have identified areas for concern and taken the appropriate corrective and preventative action, this will actually put your factory in a positive light. Your auditor will likely view it as evidence that your Internal Auditing process is working as it should be.

How to Conduct a Successful Internal Audit

3. Continuous Improvement

Along with inspecting the current status of your food production site, Retailers and Food Service Providers will also be looking to see how much your factory has improved since the previous audit. With this in mind, you will need to nurture a culture of continuous improvement – embracing every opportunity to enhance your processes and reduce or eliminate food safety risks.

If your site is currently reliant on paper checklists, this could be a good opportunity to make the switch to a Digital Management System. This will support the continued monitoring of important areas such as environmental temperature, product temperature, and oil quality. It will also eliminate the risk of human error when your team are working through HACCP checks.

As a result, you will be able to drive standards across your site and use the automatically generated reports to investigate any concerning trends. Instead of waiting for an internal or third-party audit to discover an aspect of your process is failing, you will be sent automatic alerts that allow you to act straight away. You will also be able to record the corrective and preventative actions, ready to share with your auditors if concerns are raised during your next inspection.

4. Team Meetings

Before your customer audit is carried out, it’s important that representatives from each department sit down to discuss key findings from your Gap Analysis and Internal Audits, along with the reports generated by your Digital Management System. You should also address the non-conformities from previous audit reports, making sure effective procedures remain in place and are still working as intended. If not, then they should be reviewed, amended and re-implemented. Preparation is key, with many sites discussing plans for their next audit as soon as the previous audit is complete. This will ensure the feedback from your auditors is still at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

5. Corrective and Preventative Action

Finally, you need to consider how you are going to respond to any non-conformities raised by your customer audit. Typically, sites will be given 21-28 days to close non-conformities (this may vary across different retailers and food service providers). During this period, you will need to take the following steps:

Corrective Action

Find an immediate solution for each point of non-conformance.  

E.g. Your auditor identified a cracked light diffuser panel. The panel is immediately replaced. 

Root Cause Analysis

Carry out a root cause analysis to find out why the problem occurred in the first place and how it was able to go undetected. A popular approach is the Five Whys Technique. This requires you and your team to ask “why?” something happened at least five times, until you get to the root cause of the problem.  

E.g. Your site’s Glass and Hard Plastic Procedure isn’t being carried out correctly because the team members responsible haven’t received the right training.  

Preventative Action

Based on your root cause analysis, you will need to identify areas where further preventative actions are required to stop the same issue reoccurring.

E.g. A new procedure is put in place, the relevant operatives are re-trained, and the lights across every area of your site are checked again. A regular internal audit is completed to verify the preventive action is still working.  

Providing Evidence

Within the allotted time period, you will need to submit evidence of how your site closed the non-conformance. Typically, evidence is sent electronically or uploaded directly onto a portal. Preparing the right evidence is important if you are going to ensure the issuing of any certificates is not delayed. Otherwise, you will be asked to keep submitting evidence until the certification board or customer is happy.

Key points to remember are:

  • If you issue a new procedure, you will need to include signed evidence that relevant team members have been trained against it.
  • If you carry out a repair, you will need to include before and after photos, a work order, plus a quote or invoice for the project.

The more relevant evidence you can submit the better. It is important not to underestimate the value of demonstrating the issue has been corrected and the preventive actions taken are sufficient to stop it occurring again.

E.g. Photos of the fixed light panel, your updated Glass and Hard Plastic Procedure, and signed training documents are sent to your auditor for review. 

You now have five areas to consider when preparing for a successful customer audit.

If you require further guidance in this area, the Klipspringer team would be happy to help with your enquiries. You can contact us on 01473 461800 or sales@klipspringer.com. Alternatively, you can use the form below to arrange a consultation. 

If you would like further support as you prepare for your customer audits, we would be happy to help. Share your details below and one of our friendly team members will be in touch.