ISO/TS 16949 Second Edition - The Latest Scoop!

[Tom W]

In the draft of the new TS it states that as a first step, suppliers to the organization shall be third party registered to ISO 9001:2000 by an accredited third party certification body. My question is what if the supplier you purchase from is the only source for something and they have no intention of spending the resources to get certified to ISO? What do you do and how would you address this potential problem?

This question is for anyone that has a suggestion or an answer.

[db]

Tom, you pose an interesting question. The greater question is how strong will registrars be on enforcing this? I see this as pure conflict of interest! Registrars will aggressively hit this because they stand to gain new customers!

On the QS side, the sanctioned interpretation that started this is already being watered down by the Big 3. Now it is out of their hands and into the hands of the registrars. BTW, don’t try to exclude this under “permissible exclusions” because 16949 only allows 7.3 as a permissible exclusion!

I guess I don’t have an answer for you Tom, only additional questions.

[Roger Eastin]

To continue Tom's thought to another area, does Note 2 under 7.4.1.2 allow customers to specify a 2nd party audit option IN LIEU OF the third party requirement in this section? This is what QS9000 sanctioned interpretation C9 allowed. It is not as clear here, but Note 2 does seem to allow customers to propose "alternative" requirements. I guess the question is, does Note 2 apply to the first sentence of 7.4.1.2? If so, it seems to allow other options than 3rd party registration.

[db]

Roger, good point. For those who do not have the standard Note 2 reads:

"NOTE 2 The customer may mandate alternative requirements"

It might allow some flexibility, however, I would think the customer's "alternative requirements" only apply to the suppliers for that customer's products. So if supplier A supplies parts for customer 1 and 2, and customer 1 has an alternative requirement, but customer 2 doesn't, then registration is still a requirement. I think?

[Tom W]

I agree with you db, this sounds like a way to try to make ISO and TS last and work. True ISO can benifit an organization, but if they want it to. It struggles to help a company if the company is forced to go through it. I think it is a crazy idea to think that companies will only purchase from ISO registered companies. It would be nice to get to a point in business that larger companies could say NO and it would not affect their business. (like that will ever happen).

I am going to contact an auditor friend of mine and see how he looks at this. I will give you his input once I get it.

[Ken K]

The greater question is how strong will registrars be on enforcing this?

I guess the even greater question is how this will be interpreted by the auditors and how many variations they come up with?

[tomvehoski]

As of today ISO 16949: 2002 is available for purchase from the ISO website (www.iso.ch). $116 swiss francs (about $70). I have not seen it availiable from ANSI or AIAG yet.

[Marc]

I guess that pretty well says everything!