Hello,
I have a very stupid story, and I'm interested on your opinion about what is happening at the moment with the quality handbook of my company.
We are BRC and IFS Food certified. Our quality handbook has a starting date 01-01-2012 and was updated in the last 6 years by me. For some procedures, as an example hazard analyses, we are already at version 24 (there are always updates needed and whenever there is a change I implement it). I already started updating to BRC v8 in October, slowly reading and analyzing the standard and our procedures. We were looking for a consultancy company to help us with delicate questions that are maybe difficult to implement. Someone comes for a meeting and besides the consultancy, leaves also with 1 internal audit and the updating of our handbook to version 8. The last one he promises to do in a very short time, shorter than the time that I still need for it. Because I'm in an unpredictable health state (to be understood preagnant), someone in my company completelly freaked out that will have to do my work, so it was decided to go for the offer of the consultancy company.
When we received the first "new" procedures, I already got stressed because they just have a template with 6 sentences with some general information. All my work from the last years was basicaly lost. Besides this, the numbering of the procedures changed, from 4D it was now suddenly 5G. But they kept all the forms with the old numbers (all the forms that were before coreclated to procedure 4D and have a code 4D1,2,3 are now belonging to procedure 5G). I had a discussion with the Director explaining him my concerns. After a customer audit from 2 years ago I updated our procedures so that everything is nicely explained how and when forms are going to be filled in and what is the correlation between them. The QA Manager of our customer said something like: you should have everythig written down and explained in details, so that if you "die" tomorrow, the person who will take over will know from where to start, without getting lost within the handbook. And this is what I tried to do and also in my actual situation this is the most reasonable. The Director agreed with me. After some telephone calls and explanations, we received a quality handbook which looks more with our old one.
What is still concerning me is the fact that the "new" handbook has all procedures starting from version 1, although some of them are not even changed or are just a little bit cosmetised. Some procedures have new names, are different in outlook, now coding, but most of them are just the same. How do you see this change? Besides this, all our forms have their old versions (glass register is v30) and a release date since when they are in use. But the procedures that I received have no date on them so I can't even say from when we are using them (also the procedure for data management only says that they have a version).
I'm busy now reading the new procedures and comparing them with our old ones and with the implementation guideline of BRCv8. I'm finding sentences and paragraphs that are completelly not true with the way my company works and which were copied from BRC just to match with the requirement. But in my old procedure they were all correctly described for our activity and showing that BRC is well implemented. And what is more anoying, they say that BRC v8 is implemented, but I have already several new requirements that are not covered. And the worst thing, I'm spending more time on this then if I would have updated myself. And I'm still far away from being ready.
Has anyone had similar experiences?
What is your opinion about the release date on the procedures and forms?
Thanks,
Ilona
