Any ideas on what it would entail to change the status of a support site? HQ's has the site certificate and the scope includes mfr, west coast site has support cert and scope includes, sales & warehouse mainly.

Here is the situation...
Our east coast plant is HQ and the west coast site is considered a supporting site with no manufacturing operations. The plan is to bring up one operation at the west coast site (prior to 16949 status it was another manufacturing facility & was ISO 9001 & QS, we've since let those certs lapse). So now they will more or less be a manufacturing support process (basically taking product from a reel, irradiating it and putting it back on a reel).

Can we still call them a support site, since they really aren't making anything?

Any thoughts?

Are they vital to your function and/or are you vital to their's?

Our Sales force is located off-site so the scope of our ISO 9001 certificate reads, "Manufacture and supply of xxx, including sales processes performed at the XXX and XXX offices."

We have the same function being done here, but due to capacity issues we have opted to fire up their capability out on the west coast. We basically moth-balled all operations out there, leaving in tact the sales force and shipping/receiving. We have moved much of the equipment that was there to our facility here on the east coast. So its more of an overflow than anything else since we have the capabilities here as well.