TS16949 Exclusions - Design & Development is carried out by our parent company

We are Engine parts manufacturing company supplying parts to automotive industry, we are going for TS16949.
Our Design & Development is carried out by our parent company in other country, so we are following the same designs without making any changes.
Can we exclude the Design and Development Clause.
Our parent company is already TS certified.

Can anybody please suggest.

No, you are not allowed to exclude (product) design and development.
There are two states - customer is designing product or supplier is designing product. Second state means this is performed internally, by parent company or outsourcing (supplier).

mohamedhrr said:

We are Engine parts manufacturing company supplying parts to automotive industry, we are going for TS16949.
Our Design & Development is carried out by our parent company in other country, so we are following the same designs without making any changes.
Can we exclude the Design and Development Clause.
Our parent company is already TS certified.

Can anybody please suggest.

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You can ask to your CB to pursue multisite corporate certification scheme, so that you as an organization can optimize costs.
In any case you as mfg site can exclude design & development only for product ( since you do not perform it) but you cannot exclude design & development for process.
Please let us know more details

Thanks for the suggestion,
The Design & Development for the process is also planned by the same parent company.
Still we cannot exclude?

mohamedhrr said:

We are Engine parts manufacturing company supplying parts to automotive industry, we are going for TS16949.
Our Design & Development is carried out by our parent company in other country, so we are following the same designs without making any changes.
Can we exclude the Design and Development Clause.
Our parent company is already TS certified.

Can anybody please suggest.

Click to expand...

Completely agree with Sebastian's post. I am not speaking from the rule book, but years back I experienced a similar situation. Upon being enquired, our Certification body told exactly the same thing. Between a Customer and a Supplier, there has to be someone holding Design responsibility. Besides Input/output transaction between us and parent company, scope of our Audit included ISO/TS certification status of the parent, if I remember correctly.

mohamedhrr said:

Thanks for the suggestion,
The Design & Development for the process is also planned by the same parent company.
Still we cannot exclude?

Click to expand...

No, you cannot exclude design & development for process. It is a mandatory item for ISO TS. You can only exclude design & development of the product if you are not responsible for that.
Take into consideration that design & development of the mfg process has a broad aspect, not only related to the "process" itself but also related , for example, to the planning of the layout of the equipment as well as some fine tuning on the process ( recipes, increasing of pph of the equipment, optimization of the workload of workforce etc.). In any case , you will have always some aspects of the design & development of the mfg process because there are aspects peculiar to your mfg site only.Hope this helps.

I'm currently struck with the exact same problem, and hope you don't mind asking the related issued on this thread.

We're into the 4th cycle of TS certification, and now it is brought up by the auditor for the first time telling me that if our parent company is doing the tooling design, they are the supporting function for it and the parent company's name needs to be listed on our certificate as the supporting function. Currently they are not, and it is the violation, he says. Additionally, if they are the supporting function, they must audit our parent company as well, but the problem appears to be that we're certified to TS, going through re-certification audit, but our parent company is only ISO. Does supporting function also must have TS or are they auditing only the tooling design process that we're outsourcing? If they are auditing, are they auditing everything to TS? I'm afraid that we're probably getting our certification suspended and deactivated. I kind of see their side of view, but at the same time, I'm bit mad about the CB that they never mentioned about this when we did the readiness review (stage 1) 9 years ago. I mean, they are supposed to know if we are the company that can be recommended for TS certification or not, or better off certified to ISO, but after all these contracts, only because now IATF is becoming more strict on what CB does, we're paying for the price. It's not like I'm going to make excuses or anything and I understand the auditor's point, but I think this is just really messed up after all these 9 years.

Does anyone know what can be done in a situation like this?

Crimpshine,

If your parent company is providing tool design, then it is a supporting function to your plant.

The CB is correct, this supporting function will need to be audited as part of your TS audit scope (as it will eventually be referenced on your TS certificate). Although this does not mean that everything in your parent company will need to be audited to TS.

I understand your frustration at the CB, but they do not know all the interactions between you and your parent company and who exactly does what. I suggest you explain that your new auditor found the gap (the previous auditors did not - so it is not only your fault) and that for the next audits you plan together to include an audit of tooling design at the parent company.

This does not mean that the parent company will need to be TS, just that tooling design will have to meet TS.


I would think at worst you would get an NC, (but this is not the end of the world), which I would explain to your CB contact that you see the responsibility for the NC as shared.

Good luck - remember CBs are just companies like yours with good points and bad points and QMS processes, procedures, and people who make mistakes, and Quality Managers who try to raise corrective actions.

Englishman Abroad said:

Crimpshine,

If your parent company is providing tool design, then it is a supporting function to your plant.

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One thing I forgot to mention though, our parent company does not really design the tooling FOR US. They do their tooling design for themselves, and after they developed the design and manufacture something the customer requested, later, we transplant whatever they did in Japan and launch it here in the U.S. It's not something that is first launched here and we request them to design it for us. We bring whatever the parent company is doing here for local launch.

Is our parent company still considered a supporting function?

The answer is "Yes, it is."
If they use internally designed and manufactured tools does not change situation here. They do something, what "normally" you do, so they "support" you. You need "tool" to manufacture product you supply to your customer, according to customer's requirements. This is a part of manufacturing process design activities a crucial part of system.

I have the same situation and in Quality Manual I've pointed it out together with inspection equipment and procurement, they do for us. Each year I get their CB audit report, which I forward to my CB before my audit.

I think they should contact their CB and schedule and implement an additional audit with TS auditor to satisfy your needs or assure, that during next audit among ISO auditors, there will be one TS auditor to audit activities performed for you.