Hi eveyone
First time in the forum!
I have been tasked by my company to assist with re-writing our FMEA & Control Plans as they are very basic & inadequate according to our STA engineer. The problem i am struggling with is we are remanufacturers of gearboxs & transmissions & our customer is also the designer & supplier of parts that we assemble back in to their units. The FMEA is difficult to write as we get the unit back, strip,wash, inspect,add new parts either by 100% requirements i.e bearings or replace broken components (they are supplied by the customer too!). We then build, 100% test for functionality & noise & then pack & despatch. There is very little we have to do in terms of measurement. Can anyone advise on how i can approach this task? If for instance i construct the control plan with everything we do ie detail for every gear, bolt ,washer added the CP would be hundreds of pages long.
Can anyone help as i am pulling my hair out i i don't have much left!

First off - Welcome to the Cove :bigwave:

Second - Quit pulling the hair out. It leads to having to wear hats to keep the warmth inside :mg:

Although it may sound simplistic, the first step is to map out your process flow. Although it may already have been done, make sure it has all your processing steps correct and in "logical" order (by that I mean, some processes have many branches that may not fit neatly into an ordered sequence). Make sure those are then, respectively, transferred to the PFMEA and the Control Plan. Now go through each processing step and brainstorm how the processing step might produce a Failure, what caused the Failure, and how you're going to either Prevent the Cause from occurring, and/or how you will detect the failure. In the Control Plan, all failures will be listed in the Product Characteristic column and all preventions of causes will be listed in the Process Characteristic column. (Before Jim chimes in - my methodolgy is that Failure Modes are "product defects" and Failure Causes are the "processing defects" that caused the Failure Mode) The rest of the Control Plan is merely how you will control each Product and Process control listed. (It helps me to have inspection as a unique Process step - unless the inspection is automatic or in-line).

I only gave this answer because I'm not sure of your experience with PFMEAs and CPs. The length of either document should be of no concern, nor should the ability to get it done overnight. The concern and the most important thing (IMHO) is the excersize of tearing your process apart and gaining a fuller understanding of it. The documentation is important but secondary.

Please stick around and ask more questions as you begin your improvement project. Actually, it should be a bit easier than starting from scratch because you should have some history of Failure Modes already - but that could "blind you" to looking for any new potential ones.

PPAPS take time. We had a customer that wanted the PPAP within 2 days of making the part, so we held shipment for a week while we got the package ready. Less than 3 hours run time on a machine and 5 days to complete the PPAP. Even simple 1 diameter parts take days to get everything in the PPAP right. So take your time, and charge them for the PPAP.