Hi all, has anyone every heard of putting a "Manufacturing Aide or note" on a customer print? I was told as long as it does not affect form, fit and function and material it is ok. I strongly disagree but I am looking for some direction, MY background is automotive and I am in a "job shop" now. In my past life I knew you could not change a print and/or process without notifying the customer. Thanks to all George

Hi all, has anyone every heard of putting a "Manufacturing Aide or note" on a customer print? I was told as long as it does not affect form, fit and function and material it is ok. I strongly disagree but I am looking for some direction, MY background is automotive and I am in a "job shop" now. In my past life I knew you could not change a print and/or process without notifying the customer. Thanks to all George

While I don't know what you mean by "Manufacturing Aide or note," it's common practice in job shops to develop in-house prints based on the customer drawing (to show things like bend sequences and allowances for sheet metal work, e.g.), but it's generally not a good idea to alter the customer's drawing.

We are a sheet metal job shop and we work almost exclusively with our customer drawings. Since most of our customers don't understand how a part is fabricated out of sheet metal, they do not dimension the prints accordingly. We frequently add information to the drawing to provide the neccessary information for press brake set-up personnel. We are not making a change to the configuration of the part, just adding the information the shop need to make the part. Our engineer will initial and date the additions.

If your quality system precludes modifying a customer drawing you could have engineering release an internal drawing to assist manufacturing.

In a company I used to work for, when we'd receive a customer drawing first engineering would create a drawing for each step and the operator would receive only that drawing. If a note was needed for a particular step it would be included there.

eg. A drawing for Machining Operation 1, one for spline rolling, one for machining operation 2/3/4, heat treat, hard turn/grinding, assembly.

This helped prevent any mix ups and kept clear concise drawings.

My experience corresponds with that of Jim Wynn:
It is important to note what you may be calling "manufacturing aids" [aides are humans, aids are things] are really your own trade secrets for manufacturing a customer's product.

We often made detailed shop drawings based on the customer prints, but we guarded them almost MORE closely than we guarded the customer's. Since we had multiple customers coming through our shop on a regular basis, we made it a practice to use a customer code for the shop drawings and no customer ever saw the original of another customer's product drawing.

Added in edit:
We also sealed (plastic laminate) all drawings to prevent unapproved changes to drawings. If an operator had a suggestion for a change to a shop drawing, it went through an expedited approval process before release to production.