Effivity for ISO 22000: running PRPs, the hazard control plan and their records in one system

Why a food safety system needs one home

ISO 22000 requires a plant to run two things together. One is the management system: scope, policy, objectives, competence, internal audit, management review and improvement. The other is the operation described in clause 8: prerequisite programmes, traceability, emergency preparedness, hazard analysis, the hazard control plan with its OPRPs and CCPs, verification, and the handling of unsafe product up to withdrawal and recall. Auditors look hardest at the join between the two.

In most plants the evidence is scattered: cleaning checks on clipboards, CCP logs in a folder at the line, calibration certificates in maintenance, supplier approvals in an inbox. Each record may be sound, yet nobody can follow a deviation to its root cause and on to the review that decided what to change.

Effivity, used in 50+ countries and delivered by Sterling as Automate™, puts those records in one cloud system with owners, versions, due dates and reminders. ISO 22000 does not require software; what changes is the effort the records take and how convincing they are when an auditor traces them.

Food safety work mapped to Effivity

Each food safety task lands in an existing Effivity module, with forms set up to match your plant. The table reads from the ISO 22000 area to what Effivity holds and the record an auditor typically picks out.

The context, policy and objectives, risk and compliance obligation modules hold the rest of the system: issues (including climate change, added by the 2024 amendment), the food safety policy, objectives and the legal and customer requirements that apply.

What is configured at the start

Effivity arrives with pre-configured workflows, which Sterling adapts to your operation in the first weeks, alongside the gap analysis:

• Sites, lines and users. The structure mirrors your sites and lines, and the people who do the checks are users, so each record carries the right name.
• Documents moved, not copied. The existing HACCP plan, PRP procedures and work instructions go into Documented Information with owners and versions; the ones nobody follows are retired rather than migrated.
• PRP checklists and schedules. Each prerequisite programme becomes a checklist with a frequency and an owner, matched to the ISO 22002 part and legal requirements that apply to you.
• Monitoring forms. Once the hazard control plan is agreed, each CCP and OPRP gets a form with its parameter, limit or action criterion and frequency, and a failed reading is set up to open a nonconformity.
• Registers and schedules. Measuring equipment, approved suppliers, internal audits, the mock recall and management review, each with reminders.

The order matters. Monitoring forms are built after the hazard analysis, not before, because the limits must come from the analysis and its validation. The analysis itself is covered in Hazard analysis, OPRPs and CCPs: the hazard control plan, and the PRP content in Prerequisite programmes and ISO 22002-1: what a plant needs.

Records made on the line, at the time

Effivity is cloud-based with a mobile app, so checks can be entered where they happen: at the metal detector, the cooling tunnel or the goods-in bay. That addresses a common audit weakness: records completed at the end of a shift from memory.

A worked trace: one CCP deviation

On a night shift, a cooking step reads below its critical limit. The operator records the reading and the deviation opens a nonconformity owned by the shift supervisor, who records the correction: batch on hold, disposition decided by the authorised person. The food safety team adds the root cause, a probe that had drifted, and the corrective action: the probe replaced and its verification frequency increased in the equipment register. Once the next verification shows no repeat, the record is closed. An auditor who samples that batch finds each step dated and owned.

What the certification body's auditor sees

The auditor audits your food safety management system, not the software, and at Stage 2 works by sampling: a batch, a CCP, a supplier, a complaint, an operator. Your people open the records selected and explain them. For any remote part of an audit, how records are shared is agreed with the certification body in advance.

What a well-run Effivity system shows is continuity: monitoring entries spread across shifts rather than bunched before the visit, calibration current for the instruments behind sampled readings, deviations followed to disposition, a timed and reconciled mock recall, and internal audits that reached the PRPs and the plan. The detail of the audit stages is in ISO 22000 Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits: what auditors check on the floor.

What Effivity does not do

The software does not analyse hazards, set critical limits or validate control measures; your food safety team does, and must defend its reasoning when asked. It does not replace validation studies or the physical works a PRP may need, and it does not certify. Four patterns undo the benefit:

• Paper kept alongside. A clipboard log and an Effivity form for the same check drift apart, and the auditor samples the one nobody finished.
• Forms left generic. A form without your limit and frequency invites meaningless readings.
• One person entering everything. The records then show a single name, not the operators and supervisors who did the checks.
• Closing too early. A corrective action closed before the next verification shows no evidence of effectiveness.

Effivity for ISO 22000: questions buyers ask