Is VDA 6.3 required for Manufacturing Process Audit (ISO/TS 16949)?

We're tier 2 automotive brake component manufacturing company. We have recently submitted a corrective action to CB on the NC that was found during re-certification audit and it was rejected.

The original NC stated that we did not do manufacturing process audit to verify the effectiveness and efficiency. So, we did some research and came up with the new manufacturing process audit checklist, conducted full manufacturing process audits, filled out new audit checklist, implemented additional methods to measure efficiency (machine uptime, plant utilization, etc.), and turned in the corrective action.

The issue only came up during this re-certification audit and was never mentioned by any of the previous auditors including the auditor who came to do readiness review 9 years ago. As a result, we never doubted that we were doing anything wrong, not to mention that we were never made aware of that VDA 6.3 was a requirement for manufacturing process audit.

Here's the auditor's quote:

Manufacturing process audits ? There is no root cause determined ? Results of previous audits is not a root cause, The TS requirement is ?The organization shall audit each manufacturing process to determine its effectiveness?. VDA 6.3 is the guidance document that defines and describes an effective manufacturing process audit. Chrysler has recently clarified it?s expectation on Manufacturing Process Audits and those requirements are found within their CSR located on the IAOB website. Product layouts fall under other sections of the specification (8.2.2.3 and 8.2.4.1) and do not determine if the manufacturing process is effective only that it is producing parts to print. As noted in VDA guidance control plans are an input to the audit not the whole of the audit.

Click to expand...

Does anyone have any good idea how we should respond to this? Is VDA 6.3 required for ISO/TS 16949? We spent a lot of time searching for the answer for a month on this, but no one specifically talks about it being TS requirement.

Part of the reason for the rejection is, according to him, that we did not investigate "root cause including methodology used, analysis, and results, (5why, 3Legged 5why, fishbone, 8D etc)" and that "if an 8D is utilized it needs to be a full blown 8D not just a form labelled 8D. The 8Ds submitted do not show evidence of utilizing the full problem solving methodology."

Here's another thing he had mentioned:

"Our veto reviewers are taking a hard stance on this and I need to imbed in the follow-up report a copy of your form/process for each non-conformance. They have promised that any follow-up report that is lacking this information will be rejected regardless of the consequences on the certificate."

I just wondered if this is because of the our initial audit in July with an auditor who suspended the audit because he wrote 2 major NCs, which they later withdrew the report and re-did the full audit with another auditor. Or, they did something wrong in the past year that got caught by IATF or someone reported to IATF and suddenly requiring more than what is really required? I do not exactly what is going on, but things are not going too well with our follow-ups. Our cert expires on October 7, 2014, so I don't know what we can do at this moment. It's getting to the point that their demand is becoming more than what we can handle as a small company of less than 15 employees.

Hi Crimpshrine13
VDA6.3 becomes mandatory in TS only if it is a costumer requirement (By Costumer, I mean even the final Customer), if it is not you are free to use any other aufit check-list.
For the other point you have listed, (NC management process), you should check IATF rules 4th edition, they explain the entire process.
I am sure the other covers can help you on this issue.
Regards
Amine

Amine.arafa said:

Hi Crimpshrine13
VDA6.3 becomes mandatory in TS only if it is a costumer requirement (By Costumer, I mean even the final Customer), if it is not you are free to use any other aufit check-list.
For the other point you have listed, (NC management process), you should check IATF rules 4th edition, they explain the entire process.
I am sure the other covers can help you on this issue.
Regards
Amine

Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply. Could you please refer the section on TS standard where VDA 6.3 requirement is noted and also statement saying that "if it is required by the customer"? I feel that we should challenge the auditor and the CB because the part we are manufacturing is for Toyota and Nissan and none of our customers and the OEMs ever mentioned about the utilization of VDA 6.3 in the past. This was something we discussed internally right after the audit last month, and we could not understand why the auditor was keep talking about VDA 6.3. He shouldn't be able to force us to utilize VDA 6.3 if it is not entirely required by our customers or OEMs.

Hi Crimpshrine13
VDA6.3 isn't cited any where in ISO TS 16949.
But in the introduction of the norm (P 0.5, second paragraph), it is stated that the TS16949 and the relevant Customer specific requirements are the basics of the QMS for those who subscribe to the norm.
VDA6.3 falls into CSR.
Regards
Amine

Crimpshine,

The other covers are correct, VDA 6.3 could be a CSR requirement.

Chrysler have in August 2014 revised their CSR to add a that Layered Process Audits shall be performed per CQI 8 LPA requirements (page 33 of Chrysler CSR - see IATF website). In the whole of the Chrysler CSR it does not reference VDA 6.3.

The auditor is not correct in this point. - tell him you need some help identifying where in the CSR the requirement is.

Also CSRs are only valid if you are supplying that Customer. VDA 6.3 process audit would typically be for most "German" customers (although I have not been thru all their CSRs).


If your Customers do not have a CSR regarding Process audits, then you can perform them using your Process audit format.

But the cause of the NC (I interpret from your initial post) is that you we not using the Process Audits as an input into your continuous improvement process; Raise corrective and Preventive Actions following Audits, track overall audit success globally, per department product type etc.

As far as NC resolution goes; The CBs are under a lot of stress since the revision 4 of the Rules was published. Easiest thing to do is put your work into your 8D format and send it to the auditor.

IMO given your certification issues, (once you have completed the NC closure and got your certificate renewed), change to a different CB, with auditors who know that CSRs only apply to suppliers of those customers, not to everybody in the world.

Thanks, Amine and Englishman,

The problem with this auditor is, that not only he's telling us that we don't have effective manufacturing process audit in place that we should refer to VDA 6.3 for effective manufacturing process audit, he's also telling us that the way we turned in our 8-D is insufficient. We did turn in our 8-D, but he's telling us that our root cause investigation is not enough (he wants us to use 5Ws, fishbones, etc for root cause investigation on 8-D). At this point, we truly do not have any reasons (root cause) other than auditors in the past not mentioning about this. Past auditors always accepted the manufacturing process audit we did. He apparently didn't like it and brought up VDA 6.3. But, VDA 6.3 is not applicable to us since none of our customers (including OEMs) are requiring it. While he was here during the audit, he said that we were not reviewing the effectiveness and efficiency entirely, so we decided to analyze the uptime and total utilization of the machines, not only just PPM and Cpk that we used to measure before. In addition to this, we developed new manufacturing process audit checklist to summarize the data to show how we're reaching our goals, but in his opinion it's not good enough because it is not as good as VDA 6.3.

I just don't know what would satisfy this auditor.