I could use some wisdom on how to "legally" use a new start-up supplier next door. They are a new facility whose "parent company" is a VERY large, very established, well known company. They are in the infancy stage of getting certified to ISO or QS. This type of raw material supplier DOES have to be certified per our own procedures and the Sanctioned Interpretation. If we go to perform an audit over there my problems are two-fold : Given the number of employees they have in order to comply with the "audit days" requirement I'll have to perform an initial audit of 8 days - how in the heck am I gonna' actually DO that given that they are just barely beginning certification process. Second issue, I have a problem with even doing an audit there because at this stage in their development they will FLUNK any audit I perform - they have process control in place but little else.

Our registrar has us asking our customers what they want us to do, but I don't have any responses yet. The supplier is absolutely CRITICAL to us, from a logistical, economics, cost standpoint. There is NO WAY we will not use them.

Any wisdom?

Obtain a concession/waiver !

How does that work, exactly? New territory for me... do I have to get waiver from EVERY customer we have to whom we might apply this material or will a "representative" number do?

Steel

You would need a concession from every customer that contractually mandated that your supplier was certified. If however this is just an internal control then your own single internal concession would do.

Steelwoman

Would an outside, accredited, laboratory be an option? We have gone that route while waiting for a supplier to get certified in the past.

Bill

Our own lab is certified and we test all the material we receive, no matter from whom. But I don't think that relieves us of responsibility to have our raw material suppliers certified.

SteelWoman said:

I could use some wisdom on how to "legally" use a new start-up supplier next door. They are a new facility whose "parent company" is a VERY large, very established, well known company. They are in the infancy stage of getting certified to ISO or QS. This type of raw material supplier DOES have to be certified per our own procedures and the Sanctioned Interpretation. If we go to perform an audit over there my problems are two-fold : Given the number of employees they have in order to comply with the "audit days" requirement I'll have to perform an initial audit of 8 days - how in the heck am I gonna' actually DO that given that they are just barely beginning certification process. Second issue, I have a problem with even doing an audit there because at this stage in their development they will FLUNK any audit I perform - they have process control in place but little else.

Our registrar has us asking our customers what they want us to do, but I don't have any responses yet. The supplier is absolutely CRITICAL to us, from a logistical, economics, cost standpoint. There is NO WAY we will not use them.

Any wisdom?

First question why does your supplier have to be "Certified", I know it is in your internal procedures but why?? Also, it would take you 8 days to audit this supplier per some requirement, what requirement is that?

To me it seems your company has put themselves in a very bad spot to say the supplier has to be certified and/or audited by you. I am sorry but the 8 days really baffles me, how big (number of people) is this particular supplier?

It's a QS thing - the last "sanctioned interpretation" put a specific deadline for getting all your suppliers certified to either ISO or QS. Good gosh, there's NO WAY I would do that to myself! :)

The audit days requirement is set forth in the QS standard, and the requirements for certification of the suppliers specifically states that if we choose to go the second party audit route we must comply with the audit day requirements as set forth in the standard.:eek:

Steel I apologize I didn't even notice this was under the QS- section.:truce:

Steel

Must admit I havent looked at the sanctioned interpretations in a while, but QS9000 itself says that suppliers should be complaint, i.e. SHOULD, as in desirable but not mandatory, and COMPLIANT, as in complies but not necessarily CERTIFIED.

Also as you are not a supplier to the OEMs themselves you could probably wing it anyway, **** I know we do !!

Yeah, what happened to the good ol' days (the REASONABLE days!) when the part of QS that said your suppliers had to be DEVELOPING/WORKING TOWARD certification and that was good enough? NOoooooo... we've got to get in with a "sanctioned interpretation" and demand everyone get certified NOW. :frust:

There are some things in QS I have successfully argued don't apply to us because we are Tier 2, but this one won't fly. bummer :frust:

Steel

Just took a squint at the sanctioned interpretations again.

I notice that they talk of SUB-CONTRACTORS being certified. It was my understanding that a differentiation was made between a SUPPLIER (as in your case) and a SUB-CONTRACTOR in QS9000.

Look this up and I think you may have your loop hole.

Steel, are you a tier 1 that is capable of performing the audit? Also, must the audit be complete before you use them -- or can you spread out the 8 days over a year? Does C-9 require an audit based on Appendix H?

We're Tier 2, but QS certified and per our registrar we would qualify to perform the audit providing we meet the auditor requirements (certified auditor or done enough internal's under a certified auditor). Yes, we could spread the days over a year, that's a decent option - we'll just have all these audit reports showing what they're working on but have not, probably, yet achieved.

We're Tier 2, but QS certified and per our registrar we would qualify to perform the audit

If my memory serves me correctly, I think you must be tier 1 in order to conduct the audit. I'll see if I can find the paperwork to quote the "shall"

Just to update the group, I followed our registrar's initial advice and queried our customers to see if they had a problem with us using this start-up. So far, no one has indicated ANY problem, so long as WE are certified.

Still, seems short-sighted to not have some kind of provision for start-up facilities - it's not like these are RARE.