Steps to Achieving GFSI Supplier Compliance
Ruth Bitterman
GFSI certification is required to conduct business with most large retailers, such as Costco, Albertsons, Whole Foods, and more every year. Unfortunately, suppose your facility doesn’t earn a minimum SQF score of 96, an “E” on a BRC audit, or another high score on other GFSI audits. In that case, you may only have one more chance to gain or maintain business with customers who require GFSI certification. An area that is often difficult to manage but an important piece in achieving a preferred audit score is Supplier Management. Much of the risk associated with a low score or failing a GFSI audit has to do with poor supplier compliance and management.
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is an organization that recognizes several certification programs that meet GFSI requirements. In addition to more business opportunities, following GFSI standards continues to have overwhelming internal benefits, such as eliminating redundancies and freeing up time and resources. However, if your company is GFSI-certified you may find that maintaining GFSI supplier compliance is a continuous challenge.
Managing supplier compliance with GFSI standards adds complexity to the food safety process. Ensuring vendors adhere to the same high standards requires a robust management system and tools to track compliance, report non-conformances, implement corrective actions, and track and trend performance to assist with risk-based supplier management. Effective vendor management is critical to maintaining the integrity of the supply chain and ensuring that all products meet GFSI standards.
The 3 Key Focuses of GFSI Supplier Compliance
According to Safe Food Alliance, these areas are:
Reviewing policies and procedures. Does the supplier say what they do?
Checking processes. This includes observing processes while they run, interviewing employees, and inspecting the facility. Does the supplier do what they say?
Reviewing records. Does the supplier track that they do what they say?
These three elements of the GFSI audit work to ensure that a supplier is producing safe food year-round.
Steps for Aligning Suppliers with Your Program Requirements
1.) Clarify Requirements Using Partner Portals
Email and spreadsheets aren’t good enough. Suppliers must have ongoing visibility into your program requirements to ensure full compliance. Partner portals are a convenient solution for both parties because they give suppliers visibility into your food safety requirements and your product specifications. They also allow you to review and approve any documents they upload. When documents are no longer compliant or program requirements change, alerts can be triggered to keep everyone up-to-date at all times.
GFSI certification is resource-intensive and managing those resources can be a significant challenge in maintaining supplier compliance. This requires meticulous scheduling and monitoring of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans, Prerequisite Programs (PRPs), Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). By optimizing these processes, you ’ll minimize redundancies and focus on strategic initiatives, which is essential for maintaining compliance without overextending resources. A Partner Portal will help keep all of this information organized, easy to access, and up-to-date.
2. ) Use Real-Time Data to Ensure Requirements Are Met
The biggest risk to your facility comes through your doors. Use technology to automatically capture and integrate data and set up instant notifications for out-of-spec results. This technology helps to alleviate the concern of a non-compliant material making its way into your facility and potentially being utilized in further processing prior to the non-compliance being known. By providing teams access to mobile-friendly tools they can perform all GFSI supplier compliance tasks from tablets, phones, or laptops within or outside of your facility. The results are available once submitted and user profiles are created to manage access.
Leveraging automated systems to manage and streamline your food safety processes will help in scheduling and monitoring activities, ensuring real-time data analysis, and automating workflows. These technologies reduce the administrative burden, enhance data accuracy, and improve overall efficiency in maintaining compliance.
3.) Continuously Monitor Supplier Performance
Reviewing quality checks and compliance data kept in binders or email folders is unwieldy and at times, reactive. In addition to using technology to see how your suppliers are performing currently, proactive supplier management leverages the reporting abilities of today’s solutions. Today’s digital platforms allow you to track supplier performance over a period of time, assess overall supplier performance to reduce incoming risk and make informed vendor management decisions.
This includes traceability. Ensuring food safety requires navigating complex requirements and adopting data standards to provide traceability from farm to fork. Traceability is crucial for quickly addressing any foodborne challenge whether it be biological, chemical, or physical. In recent years, the number one reason for a food recall has been allergen concerns. Whether it be mislabeling, an undeclared allergen in a supplier’s information, a formulation change, or a line that was not properly cleared for the next product. Chemical risks, contaminants, and allergen management will remain top of the list for the FDA this year. The focus may be on setting allergen limits for certain allergens. Getting ahead of these challenges is much faster and easier with the use of digital technology.
Be Audit Ready at All Times
Successfully passing audits involves thorough documentation and readiness across all operational levels. Ensure your facility is audit-ready through a centralized repository of all your records. All program data and documentation should be time, date, and user-stamped, legible, reviewed, and signed to ensure the greatest level of assurance. With this approach, records can easily be retrieved by simply logging into your system.
Supplier Management Software
The continuous updates and new standards for GFSI introduce new challenges and can often catch teams off-guard leading to confusion and low audit preparedness.
SafetyChain's Supplier Management Software is a comprehensive digital solution to manage suppliers while eliminating error-prone manual processes. With tools for capturing critical data, real-time risk monitoring, streamlined communication, and efficient supplier onboarding, SafetyChain enhances productivity, reduces supplier risk, and improves supply chain visibility, supporting continuous improvement and ensuring compliance with various standards and certifications.
