Audits at the Retail Level: Product Quality Focus

Audits at the Retail Level

• Focus on product quality, inspecting a sample that has previously been inspected and accepted by normal inspection methods to determine the degree of compliance to established requirements and its quality performance at the retail level.

Objectives of a Product Quality Audit

• Determine the quality of the company's product available to the consumer.
• Compare the results to the limits of the company's quality control (QC) specifications.
• Compare the quality of the company's product to the quality of competitive brands.
• Compare the quality of the company's product to that of the same product in previous years.
• Compare the quality of the product manufactured by the company's different plants.

Product Quality Audits at the Retail Level

• Audit should be planned through a preliminary meeting to be held by the QA auditor.
• Audit protocol should be established during the preliminary meeting, including:
  • Audit objectives
  • Sampling plan
  • Analytical tests to be performed
  • Sensory characteristics to be analyzed
  • Time schedules
• Preliminary meeting should be attended by representatives from marketing/sales, process operations, product development, sensory evaluation, packaging, and QC/statistics.

Things to Consider When Doing Product Sampling

• Sampling characteristics appropriate to the needs of the company.
• List of competitive brands to be included in the audit for comparison.
• Cities where the company and competitor brand products will be purchased (to reflect national distribution).
• Sampling proportion that will reflect plant's production and container sizes.
• Pick-up dates of samples.
• Sampling matrix and label matrix of samples.

Sensory Evaluation of Samples

• Compare sample to representative reference product taken from the same population or sampling lot.
• Reference sample – qualified as satisfactory grade at the time of production.
• 1 reference sample for every 5-6 audit samples.
• Place all reference samples under refrigerated conditions until selection and actual testing are initiated.

Analytical Testing

• Samples will be analyzed according to the required methods for quality control.
• The auditor relies on the results obtained from the analysis carried out by the QC personnel in charge of the audit.
• The QC manager should submit the results obtained for each product characteristic, for each sample, to the QA auditor, certifying the authenticity of the results and indicating any off-data, explaining reasons for errors, etc.

This quiz focuses on the process of audits at the retail level, specifically on product quality. It covers the definition and purpose of audits in ensuring compliance with established requirements and quality performance.