Hello,
We are an herb and spice company and there is some internal debate right now about what we should classify as rework. I know the SQF definition of rework is "Food, materials, and ingredients, including work-in-progress that has left the normal product flow and requires action to be taken on it before it is acceptable for release and is suitable for reuse within the process".
Now we have a few different scenarios that we have been treating as rework, but not sure if we should or just consider it regular production.
First example: Organic raw material was received and packaged as tea. Later an issue was discovered with the organic paperwork, and not the material (while completely food safe) cannot be sold as organic, it must be sold as conventional product. The affected material was removed from stock and pulled off the shelves when the issue was discovered (no recall necessary as per our organic certifier, we just could not sell remaining stock as organic).
We have a conventional item for this same tea, so we want to remove the sealed bag of tea bags from the old tea box and put it into a new box that is not labelled as organic, so we can sell it as conventional tea. I consider this rework, as we are taking a finished good and reworking it into another different finished good. (everything will be traced in our system so no traceability issues). Is this actually a rework?
Second example: Some items were originally packaged as 1 lb bags, but due to price are found to sell better as a 1/2 lb bag. We want to remove the 1 lb bags from stock (already finished goods) and bring back into the packaging room and repack into 1/2 lb bags. Again everything traced, material will have new lot number and item code, and old lot number and item code will be traceable on the workorder and in our system. I would also consider this to be rework.
In these two examples, our regular procedures will be followed, the only difference being that raw materials will not be used, we are using finished goods and making it into a different item. If we are considering it rework, we have a different category of workorder,, so we can track rework items and provide to an auditor if asked. I consider than in these examples the material has "left the normal product flow" since we don't normally package from finished goods, and so therefore consider these examples and similar ones as rework, but am I mistaken here?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
