Customer Notification/PPAP when Changing Raw Material Suppliers

[Steven Truchon]

Scenario: PPAP is approved. Material certification in PPAP file is from raw material supplier "A" that meets our/TS supplier requirements. Lets say that the material is 4130.
Either due to availability or cost reasons, we purchase material from a different raw material supplier (B) who also meets our/TS supplier requirements. The material is the same, 4130, and the material certs indicate the material meets industry chem/phys tolerances.
This customer has no specific requirements beyond TS/PPAP regarding notification or PPAP resubmission.

Questions:
Am I required to notify my customer that I changed raw material suppliers? What I read in TS and in the PPAP manual isn't quite clear on this.
I understand the requirements for suppliers for heat-treat or plating. Changing one of those certainly would require customer notification.
Is the raw material I purchase considered "bulk" material in the PPAP manual?

Any help on this subject is most appreciated.
Steve Truchon

[Jim Wynne]

In Reply to Parent Post by Steven Truchon

Scenario: PPAP is approved. Material certification in PPAP file is from raw material supplier "A" that meets our/TS supplier requirements. Lets say that the material is 4130.
Either due to availability or cost reasons, we purchase material from a different raw material supplier (B) who also meets our/TS supplier requirements. The material is the same, 4130, and the material certs indicate the material meets industry chem/phys tolerances.
This customer has no specific requirements beyond TS/PPAP regarding notification or PPAP resubmission.

Questions:
Am I required to notify my customer that I changed raw material suppliers? What I read in TS and in the PPAP manual isn't quite clear on this.
I understand the requirements for suppliers for heat-treat or plating. Changing one of those certainly would require customer notification.
Is the raw material I purchase considered "bulk" material in the PPAP manual?

Any help on this subject is most appreciated.
Steve Truchon

Customer notification is not required--see #5 on page 11 of the 3rd Edition PPAP manual,under Clarification or examples:

Suppliers are responsible for approval of subcontracted material and services that do not affect customer fit, form, function, durability or performance requirements.

Having said that, I will add two caveats:

1. My experience has been that it's almost always best to notify the customer, regardless of what the PPAP manual says.
2. The 4th Edition of the PPAP manual is due out on March 1, and my csources indicate that the rules for submission/notification are changing to eliminate the instances cited in the 3rd Edition where notification isn't required. In other words, it appears that the new requirement will be notification of all changes from what was in the original PPAP submission.

[wslabey]

Technically no, but it's better to keep the customer informed so there are no surprises.

[Kevin H]

Steve, some thoughts as a Metallurgist (I'll defer to Jim regarding the PPAP manual requirements, as I haven't reread it recently. I'm do concur with him that even if notification isn't required, it's usually the best policy.)

Most of the bar mills in the US are now EAF/remelt operations so residual element analysis should be close and have minimal effect on processing. This wasn't the case 25 years ago, when you still had bar products being produced from integrated mills running the blast furnace/BOF route. What may affect your customer is different cleanliness levels (i.e. inclusions) between mills. If produced by the same processing route, it should be very similar, but may not be identical. Would it/could it affect your customer - difficult to guess without much more information on end use, your processing, etc.
Other issues are what condition material are you purchasing - annealed, heat treated, as rolled, turned, cold drawn, ??? Selecting a different raw material source may impact your internal operations, especially if they include machining in the as received state. There will be a difference in how the material works for you if you're machining it - it may actually be better, or it may be worse, but I'd bet it won't be identical. If you're forging it, there is less concern regarding the as received state.

[Howard Atkins]

I assume that you are talking about metal, in this case the composition is equivalent.
If the material was plastic then I would say that you need approval as there will never be equality between different manufacturers of the same resin.

[Jim Wynne]

You raise a good point, Kevin. Suppliers need to be aware of what I call the Crackerjack phenomenon--there's a surprise in every box. It's also interesting to note that the PPAP rules for material testing (page 5 of the 3rd Edition manual) are almost never adhered to completely. The book says, unequivocally,

The supplier shall perform tests for all part(s) and product material(s) when chemical, physical or metallurgical requirements are specified by the design record or Control Plan)

(Emphasis added).

Customers issue specifications that usually include reference to a standard (ASTM, e.g.) and the basic expectation is that all of the requirements in the standard will be addressed in the material test report. Again, this happens only rarely, in my experience. What the supplier is likely to include in a PPAP submission is a mill or distributor's "cert" that addresses chemical analysis, perhaps a passing reference to a standard (without reference to its revision level, which the PPAP manual also requires) and little more.

In general, suppliers need to do a better job of verifying that the metals used have been tested properly and meet the requirements of the standard specified by the customer.

[Narayana]

1. Yes. If there is any change in the supplier one needs to notify their customer.
2. As far as i know if there is no specific profile of the raw material needed, then it can be cosidered as a bulk material.But one has to make sure that changing of the raw material supplier don't affect the quality or any other functional requirements of the customer.