When I receive supplier surveys, I print out a standardized letter which tells of our ISO certification. In addition, a copy of our organizational chart, general information sheet, an uncontrolled copy of our quality policy manual, and their uncompleted survey is sent to them.

One of our suppliers sent me a letter stating that I did not fill out their survey, and since it is a "document of external origin" I must maintain this survey as a record.

Could someone give me some insights on this.

In my last company we used to do the same thing, answering all surveys with a standard response.

There is no 'must' about retaining survey repsonses.

dbulak said:

When I receive supplier surveys, I print out a standardized letter which tells of our ISO certification. In addition, a copy of our organizational chart, general information sheet, an uncontrolled copy of our quality policy manual, and their uncompleted survey is sent to them.

DBULAK,

Regardless of whether there is an ISO compliance issue here I think there is a bigger issue you may be overlooking. Your customer has sent you a survey and asked that you fill it out. You decided that this is too much trouble and the customer should just accept your standard response. IMHO this is an arrogant attitude to be taking with your customer. My advice: Despite it being a bit of a pain in the butt, bite the bullet and fill it out as they ask and also send whatever supplemental information you want. By doint it your way you're throwing a curveball to the customer and they might be taking it as an insult.

To me, it's kind of like applying for a job when they hand you their standard job application and you say "all of that information is on my resume'". Would you do that?

You might want to rethink this one. Just my opinion.

Mike S.

Mike, I never thought of it that way. I felt that they were actually getting more and returned alot sooner than if I just filled out their survey. Never thought of it your way. Time to think this out.

Thanks

It appears that you are already ISO certified. Is that correct?

It has been my experience that on most vendors surveys the first question asks if you are already certified to some standard (ISO, QS, etc). If you are they ask for a copy of your cert and that's it. You don't need to fill out the rest of the form.

Its possible that you have been sending them more than they are asking for.

James

JRKH, you are correct, we are ISO certified. You are also correct about some of the surveys that I get. Some only require a copy of the certification with a few pieces of information filled out. The entire survey need not be filled out. This seems to be the norm for these types of surveys. So I guess in this case what I have been sending is ok. There are some surveys that ask only a small number of very basic questions, so again I think what I have been sending is ok.

This particular survey also included information on their quality rating system for their suppliers. Their survey and the information on the rating system they say are documents of exteral origin.

Would the rating sytem for suppliers that they sent have to be controlled? First time I have ever heard of it. I know they are QS9000. Is this how QS handle this?

Mike, I never thought of it that way. I felt that they were actually getting more and returned alot sooner than if I just filled out their survey. Never thought of it your way. Time to think this out.

Thanks

Many companies send out surveys so they can show they are checking on their suppliers. Surveys take time to fill out due to the the survey details. With a number of exceptions we normally answer a request with a very detailed standard response. If the survey either goes into a file or the standard response answers the questions, we never hear anything more. If an actual filled o survey is needed the customer asks, and we fill out the survey. A request to fill out the survey is very unusual. The bottom line is that we have saved a large amount of a quality engineers time.

You will see threads in here (especially under TE) complaining of the lack of response from the customer or supplier. QS doesn't mandate that the responses be received, but that the surveys be sent. I grade the response under "On Time Delivery". The survey is something requested, a valuable commodity and something that can have a significant impact on the company. On the flip side - the surveys we receive go through our Program Managers to me. They grade me on my deliverable back to them.

I don't think anyone talked here about customer satisfaction.
If your customer requests something and you dont respond, or respond in a different way how does this affect "customer perception".
Because this sems beauracratic then the replies appear to be casual but remember that suppliers must be measured now and one criteria that I like to use is responsiveness.
Would you react in the same way to a "complaint"?

Reading this thread, I am lost, is the survey from a vendor, or a customer? It does make a difference. I would be more incline to answer a customer survey rather than a vendor survey. I find most surveys to be a total waste of time anyway. But we all seem to think that we need surveys to gauge customer satisfaction.

As far as surveys being “documents of external origin”, I don’t think so. A “document” is generally considered something that we use to do our jobs. It would be a real stretch to call that a document. I have heard of an auditor that demanded that day planners be on the master list, and they are much closer to documents than surveys (IMNSHO).

db, these are customer surveys. And no one really has an answer to my questions. Where does it say that customer surveys are documents of external origin?

Okay, help me out here. Your customer sends you a survey. You fill it out and send it back. What is to keep? If you don't send it back? Why not?

One could conclude that since customer surveys play a major role in customer satisfacation (might be a wayward assumption), they need to be handled as controlled documents. But, I personally don't see it.

As far as keeping them (provided you don't send them back), my only thinking is if makes sense to keep them, then keep them. if it doesn't then toss 'em.

I see no "shall" in this....do you?

db

Are you confusing your Customer Surveys with your Supplier Surveys in the above post ?

Martin asked:
Are you confusing your Customer Surveys with your Supplier Surveys in the above post ?

No I'm not Martin, the problem is I have heard different definitions of the two. Here are my definitions:

Supplier surveys: The survey you send to your vendors
Customer surveys: The survey you receive from your customer’
Customer satisfaction surveys: The survey you send to your customer to determine satisfaction.

Now which are we talking about?

:frust: :bonk:

Sorry - I thought we were talking about a supplier survey sent from my customer to me. As such this has nothing to do with my determination of customer satisfaction does it ?

Let's start from the beginning. My customer sends their quality survey to fill out. THEY ALSO SEND INFORMATION on how they are going to rate our quality and delivery. Is this information on quality and delivery to be considered a document of external origin? Is the quality survey a document of external origin?

I've battled with questions very similar to this one. I can't remember who or when but someone along the way has told me that you had to consider your copy of ANSI/ISO/ASQ Q9001-2000, Quality Mangement Systems Requirements as a document of external origin. In this case, I say.....if you do that what about the Microsoft Word Book I have sitting on my bookshelf?

What does the standard mean by "document of external origin"? I'm thinking along the lines of my Customer provided drawings, etc.

Jamie

I should think that control of documents of external origin only extends to those documents used or referenced in your QMS. If you do not use this questionnaire in your own QMS there is no need for any kind of 'control'. This clause normally extended to customer drawings, standards and the like.

4.2.3 Control of documents

Documents required by the quality management system shall be controlled.


f) to ensure that documents of external origin are identified and their distribution controlled,
ISO9001:2000

According to my understanding external documents that are required by the quality management system need to be controlled.
Any document that is a basis for use in your QMS, standards 3rd party and customers, customer drawings, customer procedures etc need to be controlled.
See section II of QS9000 GM requirements, there is a list of procedures that the supplier has to have and there is the requirementNAO Suppliers shall verify that they are using the latest version of these documents at least annually.

This would seem to me the situation.