The Supplier Approval Program Handbook: Building a That Passes 21 CFR 117, SQF, and Your Customer's Audit

Your supplier program will fail an audit for one of five reasons. This book fixes all five. Most supplier approval programs in American food manufacturing are filing cabinets. Questionnaires get collected and never read. Certificates get treated as verification. Every supplier is classified high risk, so none of them are. And the approved supplier list is a spreadsheet nobody owns. George West-Perry spent thirteen years on the operator side of food safety and quality. He ran a global supplier program across more than 200 suppliers and co-manufacturers on six continents, with no foodborne outbreak while the system grew more than 60 percent in units. He has built the audit programs national brands use on their suppliers, and he has answered to those programs as a supplier. This is the manual for the rest of us: the QA manager who is also the entire quality department, with a customer audit on the calendar and no budget for a consultant. Inside: - What 21 CFR 117 subpart G actually requires, in operator language, and what FDA investigators really look at- What SQF and BRCGS expect beyond the regulation, and the scope gaps that generate findings- A risk classification matrix that fits on one page and survives its author's departure- Why 40-page questionnaires produce fiction, and how to build one suppliers answer honestly- How to choose verification activities that match the failure mode, not the supplier- A supplier scorecard that predicts problems instead of recording them- Corrective actions that fix root causes, and why "retrained the employee" is the most common lie in food safety- Foreign suppliers, co-manufacturers, brokers, contract laboratories, and the sole-source supplier nobody wants to touch- A week-by-week 90-day build plan written for a one-person QA department Eight working figures you can lift straight into your own program, including the four-input risk matrix, the one-page approval record, the five-metric scorecard with thresholds, and the 90-day schedule. Every chapter ends with a numbered checklist you can execute that week. Written for QA managers, FSQA leads, and plant leadership at food manufacturers preparing for their first GFSI certification, their first major retail customer, or their next FDA inspection.