Purchasing Procedure - Where to put Material Request in the Procedure

Here's a good one for all of you QS/ISO gurus. We are a job shop/machine on the "fly" shop. We also do automotive production on a smaller level. Now, with that breif background, let's get into the mess. We do have a procedure for Purchasing and so on that has been approved by a registrar. Here's the case: In the beginning, before certification, there was the P.O., the P.O. was used as sole purchasing document. Mr. P.O. was reviewed and signed prior to order, and all was well. Then, 6 months later, things began to change. Now, Mr. P.O. has another friend, Mr. Material Req. Mr. Material Req. is used by Operations Managers to "plan" or "project" what materials are needed for specific jobs. Once Mr. Material Req. is completely filled out, the Purchasing Agent can review him. Once reviewed, Mr. P.O. is then created using the data gathered from Mr. Material Req. My question to you guys is, how do I implement and where do I implement Mr. Material Req. into my procedure,err,or do I even need to??? Pardon my explination, but I'm married to a Kindergarten Teacher!!

A Confused dude,
Joe_1

Mr. Material Req. should be covered somewhere in writing, dependent upon on the tiering of your Quality System documents. If Mr. P.O. is detailed within a Work Instruction and referenced in a Tier I or a Tier II document then I would do Mr. Material Req. likewise. At the very least the process that states how Mr. Material Req. is used needs to be in a Work Instruction.

[Marc]

And remember that Mr. Material Req is the source (well, at least one source) specifying requirements. So - contrast what is on the material req with what's on the PO.

[Tom Goetzinger]

As Marc indicated, the Material Req is one source for transmission of requirements to the Purchasing Department. Unless you want to create a work instruction for every method of requirement transmission, I would suggest wording your PO procedure to allow input from appropriate sources and let it go at that.
Be careful that you don't create such a burdensome system that it is not beneficial to your company and becomes a burden to maintain.

[This message has been edited by Tom Goetzinger (edited 26 January 2000).]