September 30, 2015- BQ 9000 Management Review Meeting

September 30, 2015- BQ 9000 Management Review Meeting

Attendance

*Dave Astrauckas

*Mike Keuss

*Jennifer McAllen

*Carlos Croatto

*Matt Baker

*Chris Albero

*Pat Donahue

Jen:

Results of Audit –

As you all know we just had our audit last week. I just want to go over the findings in detail with the group. Unfortunately we had onenonconformance, four areas of concern, and two opportunities for improvement. I’d like to go through the nonconformance first.

Our nonconformance is that our program (QSP 4.1 for those of you who were wondering) says that all of our documents are to be reviewed at least once every three years and that the revision will be updated even if no changes are made. This is not something BQ 9000 requires – it’s our own rule on documents. I will start printing the documents, starting with the QSPs and circulate them internally for review. Please take a look and initial each document. Once each document has been reviewed the changes will be made and document revision numbers updated. Any document that does not have changesmade will also need the revision numbers updated.

Chris: When will that start? Do you want us to print?

Jen: I have already started printing the QSPs and will circulate as soon as possible

Matt: Please let us know once they start circulating

Jen: Will do.

The first area of concern is that we should review the method for controlling revision levels of the BQ 9000 specific template sections used in contractor surveys and our vessel cleanliness specification emails to be sure there is a way to verify that the same template is being used each time and if changes are made that the new template is being used by all.

Chris: Could we just make it a practice to check the BQ 9000 site to check latest document revision before using any of the documents we have uploaded into Agrifuels?

Jen: That’s a good idea. If there is a new version of a document then the old one should be removed and new one uploaded. As far as our templates our internal templates say for survey instructions we do have general operations templates that are used for our products – we just need to update them with the specifics of the actual operations which is why they probably look so different. This has been a previous area of concern, but we haven’t seen any issues regarding these. Let’s just make sure we use the templates to start and if anyone can think of other possible ideas on this let me know.

Chris & Pat: Okay

Jen:

The next area of concern is to review the Corrective action process for better efforts documenting the actual actions taken and why they were taken, and then verifying the effectiveness of those actions in preventing recurrence of the original issue. The first thing that came to mind for me is that we have all these conversations discussing any issue and possible solutions and that we always have a solution that comes out that we can review for its effectiveness, but we don’t document it and upload into QCS. Maybe we could write up a summary and upload into QSC?

Chris: That’s a good idea, but what if it happens over a weekend and then we forget to recap and upload. Will we have a non conformance?

Jen: I think for now we should just all think about what could work and once we have some options we can look at what the ramifications could be.

Group: Okay

Jen:

The next area of concern is to review the management review meetings and minutes to be sure there are records of the results of the discussions and evidence that all he topics were discussed. Rather then creating another document to fill out I will probably just work on a different format to document the meeting info. Maybe list the topics that need to be addressed per the program and discuss them in order. I’ll have to think about the best way to adjust the notes and follow up.

Mike:Okay lets see what you come up with.

Jen: Okay.

The next area of concern is to review the process to be sure our audit records have evidence of what was audited. So for this there is a checklist we have always followed, but it doesn’t seem to dig deep enough to be helpful. I’m going to work on an additional process to go along with the checklist and try it on our next internal audit.

Dave: That sounds like a good idea, but make sure you mention to the auditor as well.

Jen: I will.

And the opportunity for Improvementsare that we should consider stronger records identifying to whom cleanliness requirements were sent and consider requesting stronger records of which facility provided the biodiesel when purchased from companies with multiple locations.

Mike: Are we not keeping record?

Jen: We have been relying on just emails on who we send cleanliness requirements to.

Dave: So what are we going to do?

Jen: I’d like to work on the document review issue as a main focus for now and come back to this. We could possibly do a calendar alert that prompts ops to do the email blast to all carriers and maybe make a sheet similar to the BQF 1 form sheet, but we should take a look at how many counterparties we need to send these requirements to.

Dave: Okay. So to be continued then.

Jen: Yes

So now that we’ve gone through the audit findings I’d like to go through the meeting topics we need to cover to be sure we don’t miss any. The topics are results of the internal quality system audit which we just covered. The next is customer feedback. Does anyone have any?

Chris: As slow as it has been there really haven’t been any customer issues to report.

Mike: Shouldn’t it be any customer feedback? Positive or negative?

Jen: Yes. We should talk about any feedback- bad or good.

Chris:We haven’t gotten any operational feedback from any suppliers or receivers. It’s been slow.

Jen: Okay.What about from the traders?

Mike: Honestly the business is slow. We really haven’t gotten any feedback, but we can try to ak the question.

Jen: Okay well if anyone thinks of anything you can always email the group and we can discuss. The next topic is process performance & product conformity. Any feedback? Bad or good?

Chris: We haven’t had any quality issues to report so that’s good.

Jen: Thanks Chris. Don’t forget to document any that come up in QCS.

Chris: Will do

Jen: Next is status of preventative and product corrective actions. I will be entering in the audit findings into QCS and reviewing the dated issues we have left open in the system that should be closed or updated. This means I will be asking about old issues so do your best to give me any feedback on them. The next item is follow up actions on previous management reviews. It doesn’t look like the notes from our last meeting had follow ups. This one has a few so lets make sure we discuss next meeting.

Mike: Who will make sure that happens?

Jen: I’ll print up these notes before our next meeting and make sure we discuss.

Mike: Okay

Jen: Next is changes that could affect the quality management system – to me we should remove Vopak from the program if we know we wont be storing biodiesel there anymore.

Dave: We still have other products there and a good relationship with Vopak so if the need for storage comes up we would maybe take on tanks again so we should keep it for now.

Jen: Okay. Let’s see what happens and discuss in the next meeting. Next item is discussions to optimize procedures and work instructions. I think once we circulate these documents we will have some information to discuss.

Chris:okay

Jen: Last item is recommendations for improvement. For me I just think its really important that we take a close look at our program – especially the documents and figure out of we have created extra work where the BQ program didn’t say we needed to. We do what we are supposed to just as our normal business practices and they are what the program says as well, but I worry that in all the original documents we created for this program we may have complicated things that should be simple. Like the document review issue. We typically update a document when we have a change, but our own program says even if there haven’t been any changes we need to revise. On the one hand I’m happy it did because we will all review everything – on the other hand we have a non conformance for an issue that the program doesn’t say we need to do. Just something for us to be mindful of.

Matt: then let’s review the documents. Make any changes we think make sense and do the revisions. We can review the overall program after we address our nonconformance.

Dave: Agreed

Jen:Then it looks like we have covered everything. Please let me know if anyone thinks of anything else.