TS16949 Section 4.2 Documentation Requirements - Multiple Locations

The company I work for currently TS16949 accredited. Out certificate specfically lists our manufacturing location and our offsite sales and engineering offices in Detroit. My question is as follows: If the manufacturing facility that I am located in is the primary facility, is it required that we must have on hand a copy of all current controlled documents used at our offsite location? This seems somewhat unclear to me.

There is no requirement that there should be hard copies anywhere.
The requirement is that document control can be demonstrated.
If this is by a soft copy system good for you.

The isssue is that one of our internal auditors discovered that some of their documented processes were several revisions beyond what we had on file at our facility.

puddycat said:

The isssue is that one of our internal auditors discovered that some of their documented processes were several revisions beyond what we had on file at our facility.

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Hi puddycat -

Do you have some sort of notification system in place that isn't being followed? Or is that the problem, there's no notification system in place?

You hit the nail on the head Cari. Our document control regulation process was not correctly followed, and we were not notified of revision changes to their processes.

The cup is half full

puddycat said:

The isssue is that one of our internal auditors discovered that some of their documented processes were several revisions beyond what we had on file at our facility.

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Puddycat

It is not very often I feel optimistic, but your cup is half full.

It seems they at least have ownership of their own process and made changes to reflect their changed methods.

Too often it seems to go the other way, changes made without updating the documents.

Do you have electronic access to their docs? Can you just declare them as the holders of the most current and you check as needed? Can it be made easier, do you really need to hold a copy at your location, or can you find the most current from their location when you need it?

puddycat said:

The company I work for currently TS16949 accredited. Out certificate specfically lists our manufacturing location and our offsite sales and engineering offices in Detroit. My question is as follows: If the manufacturing facility that I am located in is the primary facility, is it required that we must have on hand a copy of all current controlled documents used at our offsite location? This seems somewhat unclear to me.

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Only documents that are relevant for that location. A design center would not have to have the manufacturing calibration or maintenance procedure, unless it is relevant to their activities as well.

Electronic availability on the central server can be a good solution, as well.