The Quality Plan is a document that supports the existence of your certificate and is very critical in the certification process. It contains the information on how a product, that has been certified by the BBA, is manufactured and controlled, which enables the manufacturer to demonstrate adequate control to ensure every batch of material produced will perform in the same way as described in the BBA certificate.
For each raw material that is listed in the quality plan, all the key properties either measured or taken from the Certificate of Analysis (or other documents), must be defined and listed with the acceptance limits and relevant units of measurements within the quality plan document or a controlled document within the manufactures quality management system. It is not sufficient to just reference the document alone.
This is to enable the auditor to have sufficient information to confirm that the raw materials used have not changed from those originally used, when they conduct their inspections.
Where this information is not present within the current Agreed Quality Plans the BBA will ask manufactures to provide this information at the next opportunity usually during the review of the certificate.
