Benchmarking New Supplier First Article Processes

[RosieA]

My company has recently created a Supplier Quality Engineering Dept. for which I am the manager.

One of my first tasks is to unify the Supplier First Article process across the 14 facilities in 7 counties, that comprise our division.

Today, the Strategic Sourcing group in procurement is responsible for locating new low cost suppliers and initiating the process of approving them. We do not have a common process for launching a first article. Some are started via an ECN, some plants have a New Product Announcement process, and some have something called a Trial Material Process.

As a result, Procurement gets confused, and when first articles come in QA is usually surprised and is scrambling to get the inspections done because everyone is waiting for the results.

I have talked to the division quality managers and some of the procurement people about their issues and frustrations. We have a few good processes, but are wondering if anyone else has a process we could benchmark, or a software that they're using to track new supplier initiative, specifically, the first article inspection process?

Thanks

[Stijloor]

In Reply to Parent Post by RosieA

<snip> Today, the Strategic Sourcing group in procurement is responsible for locating new low cost suppliers and initiating the process of approving them.<snip>

Hi Rosie,

I am afraid that the (main) criterion "low cost" is already established, and that "first article" inspection results will likely play second fiddle in the supplier approval process. Trust me Rosie, low cost comes with a price. Wishing you the best with this endeavor.

Stijloor.

[arios]

May be the guys from the automotive sector would say that the PPAP process could serve as a benchmark for other industries in the area of parts qualification. I have been away from that sector for several years so I hope one of the cove members with that experience can elaborate more. No that you have to implement PPAP, but at least you can probably consider some concepts from that methodology.

[gard2372]

I've had experiences with ASQR-01 from UTC.

I googled it and got a lot of hits with pdf's:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&r...&aql=&aqi=&oq=

[RosieA]

I hear you Stijloor. Price drives the bus, but we do not approve the supplier until the first article passes.

We're not in either the automotive or aerospace, or other regulated world, so what I'm looking for is more the logisitcs of launching and tracking first articles, vs a method do doing first articles.

Does that make sense?
Thanks for the feedback and links!