WE have a situation where the TS Standard tells us that all of our suppliers must be at least ISO 9000 certified. We have several "brokers" which supply us with scrap steel. They buy huge quantities and sell smaller quantities to a number of smaller mills. How can this broker be expected to be ISO certified? He would have to audit himself, hold management reviews with himseld, etc. This does not make sense to me in this case. Can someone help as out TS auditor said we have 3 years to get them registered or we will have to quit using these brokers to maintain our TS certification. You can also customers to relinquish this but you have to get this from all of your customers. This also is not an easy task and I doubt all of them would say yes. So now our hands are being tied to use the one broker who is ISO certified and charges a premium which will make us less competetive. Suggestions??

He needs to do the same thing as a 1000 employee company, but not to so grand a scale.

Is he required to be "registered" or just have a "compliant" system? There is a big difference.

I don't know who your registrar is and of course I know "interpretations" vary widely from registrar to registrar, but this very issue came up a year or so ago with us (we also buy steel from "brokers") and our registrar said the "ruling" they got, presumably from the IAOB, was that brokers were NOT required to be certified, (emphasis Marc) for the very reasons you cited. It's an issue of responsibility - how can I expect my broker to be responsible for the quality of a product he normally doesn't even come within thousands of MILES of?! Most steel brokers do their work, buying and selling, over the phone or internet and simply ARRANGE for shipments of steel, which may come from a wide variety of sources.

Now that said, SOMEONE has to assume responsibility for the quality, and in this case it's US - we process the material and then perform our own testing/measurements to make sure it's up to par. It'd be a different scenario entirely if we purchased material from a broker and then sent it, untouched, to a customer. Sounds like you're doing the same thing we are, buying the scrap then doing something with it that then has to pass through your quality controls.

The SECOND our registrar gave us this "interpretation" I actually ADDED it, as a note, to my Steel Purchasing procedure, for that just-in-case-I-get-run-over-by-a-truck reason, in case someone else needs that info. But I didn't record where the REGISTRAR got that info from, just that it was their ruling on the issue (which was 'nuff for me). It's not the kind of thing you can search and find a "sanctioned interpretation" for, but I DO believe, if memory serves, it was a question they had bounced to the IAOB so you might inquire from them directly?

WE have a situation where the TS Standard tells us that all of our suppliers must be at least ISO 9000 certified. We have several "brokers" which supply us with scrap steel. They buy huge quantities and sell smaller quantities to a number of smaller mills. How can this broker be expected to be ISO certified? He would have to audit himself, hold management reviews with himseld, etc. This does not make sense to me in this case. Can someone help as out TS auditor said we have 3 years to get them registered or we will have to quit using these brokers to maintain our TS certification. You can also customers to relinquish this but you have to get this from all of your customers. This also is not an easy task and I doubt all of them would say yes. So now our hands are being tied to use the one broker who is ISO certified and charges a premium which will make us less competetive. Suggestions??
That TS auditor is a fool.

Here is a true interaction between myself and a "registrar" more than 10 years ago, as accurately as I can remember:

R: Are you ISO 9000 registered?
Allan: No.
R: Why not?
Allan: What's the point?
R: You'll be able to improve your systems and get more customers.
Allan: I do that all the time.
R: Don't you have a QA Manual?
Allan: No.
R: Why not?
Allan: What's the use of it?
R: To reference your procedures.
Allan:I don't have any
R: But you must have written procedures.
Allan: What's the point of that?
R: So that your people will know what to do.
Allan: But, I am only a 1 person operation.
R: But, it would be good for training.
Allan: Who for? Who should write it?
R: You, you run the company.
Allan: If I can write it, I know what's in it, so I don't have to read it and I do not need training by me in my own procedures.
R: You should still have one.

And it went on.

I could not possibly reveal which registrar engaged me in that conversation. I was living in Britain at the time. :rolleyes:

THAT, in a nutshell, is the part of the entire quality system world that is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. As one Cover says, often, ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL and one quality system does NOT apply to every business every where. Geeze...... :bonk:

Can you help me locate something in writing from the IAOB on the broker issue? This would do us a great service and thank you for your insight.

I took my registrar's word for it and recorded it as their blessing (the registrars) in our system, for posterity. So I don't have anything directly from IAOB on that, but I'll google it and see if I can find anything.

So now our hands are being tied to use the one broker who is ISO certified and charges a premium which will make us less competetive. Suggestions??

Actually thinking a little more about this, there are some possibilities for winning your case on this matter:

1. If the existing one man broker does a good job and you have records to support the quality of service etc you receive, why should you go anywhere else? I would put it to this (to use Randy's favorite epithet) "clod" and ask whether your evidence is sufficient. If the "clod" wants to dispute this, then ask whether or not he is asserting the existing one many broker is in some way incompetent or his service is "not of quality". And, ask him to repeat that assertion on a conference call to the broker. What the broker choses to do with a possible slander is up to him.

2. But, I do not think the relevant ISO committee or the auto makers will impress their politicain friends from tacitly imposing a policy that discriminates against small business, or the self-employed. Nor do I think the registration industry would want the associated publicity. It should be drawn to their attention as a case example.

3. If your company has a policy of "partnership" and believes in it, your CEO should weigh in and advise the "clod" and its top management that such poor judgement is not conducive to retaining your company's account for certification. Support a loyal supplier - it pays off.

Don't forget the other "out" is the "customer specified" or customer okay issue - if your automotive customers approve the use of this non-certified one-man show, then customer okay/request trumps the standard. We have one outside processor who LITERALLY has a small slitter in his BARN (I kid you not). One customer has used him for years and requires us to use him for his stuff. Of course he's not certified to anything and isn't about to be - his trained staff is the cows who know to get out of his way when the slitting starts! Anyway, we dutifully have a letter in our file from the customer saying he approves of us using this uncertified vendor.

The things ya' gotta do.....

It should be possible to have a one person organization registered to 9K.....after all, 9K has WAY more room than does ISO/IEC 17025.....and I know of 17025 accredited one person calibration operations.

They face the same thing, internatl audit, management review, etc., but they realize that such things are tools. They step back and take a formal structured look at the operations instead of relying on the day-to-day first hand knowledge they have. They can not be impartial of course, but sometimes taking a step back and looking at the big pic is a good thing.

Obviously, the quality manual and related aspects of the management system will be far simpler than for a 300, or even a 30 person operation.

Hershal

his trained staff is the cows who know to get out of his way when the slitting starts! ....
Brings a whole new meaning to the thought of milking the supplier for what you can get?

Our auditor told us we would have to get all of our customers to support using the non-registered scrap suppliers which would be a huge burden when you have hundreds and maybe thousands of customers. I suspect some of them would not accept it as well. :thanx:

We had this discusion before in the TS forum.
See http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=8456

especially for the IATF input

If you refer to the IATF guidance to ISO/TS 16949:2002 para 7.4.1.2 states that the supplier refers to sites where production and/or service parts specified by the customer are manufactured. It then refers you to the ISO/TS 16949:2002 para 3.1.6
manufacturing
process of making or fabricating
- prodcution materials
- production or service parts
- assemblies, or
- heat treating, welding, painting, plating or other finishing services
If their is no manfacturing there is no need for ISO 9001:2000

I have actually helped a one man company get 9001 certification, it is now a two man company (see .... ISO doubled his company!).

Seriously he was a designer who then subcontracted the manufacturing work so the system concentrated on how he organised design and manufacturing subcontracting.

He is a 2nd tier automotive supplier.

Our auditor told us we would have to get all of our customers to support using the non-registered scrap suppliers which would be a huge burden when you have hundreds and maybe thousands of customers. I suspect some of them would not accept it as well. :thanx:
Change the auditor and registrar

Make a universal quality manual that they can all plug their company name into. I'll send you one if you need it.

Make a VERY BASIC set of procedures (the six Required).

Ask them to write one procedure describing how they interact/supply you.

Give them a certificate that says they are ISO "compliant"

Tell the registrar they can accept this, or you will find another.

Carl-