There are 4 distinct areas of QC within the grading and packing operation, namely raw material assessment, on-line QC inspection, final QC inspection and shelf life assessment.
Raw material assessment
- This is dealt with in the ‘Post storage grading’ section.
On-Line QC inspection
- This is designed to ensure packed product is within the specification. It is the responsibility of supervisors to maintain the required standard but QCs should monitor the situation by sampling fruit at various stages of each production run.
- Product should be inspected and the results recorded at the beginning, during and at the end of the production run. Times of inspection should be recorded.
- Assessment should be made for visual quality, firmness using a FTA machine, edibility, label compliance and pack weight conformance.
- QC staff carrying out on-line checks should have access to the most up-to-date customer specifications.
- As a guide 3% of product should be inspected on line.
- The QC should inform the supervisor of any quality issues and appropriate action must be taken. This may result in stopping the line, withdrawing product and rectifying the problem. For example product that is underweight will require re-weighing.
Final QC Inspection
- Final QC Inspection should only be a confirmation of the status of the packed fruit.
- If product at this stage of production is found to be below grade, clearly other QC inspections have failed. This is a serious issue and investigations should take place to identify where systems have failed.
- Final QC inspection should take account of visual quality, fruit firmness using a FTA machine, weights, label compliance including traceable information, pallet stacking and security.
- Some multiples require final inspection to be a positive release formally signed off and shown on a positive release pallet label. This is taking the place of depot inspection and passing the responsibility to the supplier to ensure product fully complies with customer specification.
Shelf life assessment
- Shelf life procedures allow the supplier to monitor a sample of despatched product. This enables a pre-warning of any issues of product deterioration, which may indicate a serious problem requiring withdrawal of product or possibly a reduced ‘display until’ period.
- For example, where a product loses its condition before the ‘display until’ date, it will be beneficial to the supplier, retailer and consumer to reduce the period on display.
British Retail Consortium (BRC) Standards
The procedures of best practice indicated in the sections on ‘Post storage grading of fruits’ and ‘Post storage packing and distribution of fruits’ deal with in-house grading and packing activities. However, the packing, environment and general procedures for all multiple customers and many higher profile wholesale customers require compliance with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standard.
- This code of practice covers all aspects of recognised best practice in product management systems.
- Accredited auditors carry out audits of suppliers seeking to achieve the BRC standard.
- The supplier may choose the auditor from a list of accredited auditors.
- The supplier bears the cost of audit expenses and the audit results are the supplier’s property.
- The supplier will authorise release of the audit reports to potential customers in support of any business agreement.