Material Review Boards - Are these DOD things a thing of the past?

Are these things a thing of the past? Does anybody out here use that term anymore to describe who is responsible for reviewing nonconformances and ultimate dispositions? Or, is it a carry over from the DOD days?

Ex-Chairman of the MRB.

[E Wall]

This function (for nonconforming material in the plant) is handled by the QA Auditors, QA Manager and Material Manager taking appropriate actions as necessary. We have nothing that refers to a MRB.

Of course, we are a mfg plant not the Corp office...and they technically handle the supplier complaints and only forward to us what they want our participation on.

Eileen

[SteelMaiden]

We still use a material review board. It seems like if you don't schedule it to be done, and if you don't have at least a couple of folks from different areas to kind of keep everybody on track, it just doesn't get done.

We tried to just tell 2 people to coordingate it and get it taken care of, unfortunately it became a low priority item then and they couldn't seem to pull it together. Now they have to meet every week and submit a report on their findings to the steering committee (which meets once a week, the day after MRB)

[CarolX]

Energy,

I haven't heard that term in a long time...although I think it has been renamed a dozen different things, a rose is a rose!

CarolX

[Roger Eastin]

We just put a MRB back in place, because as SteelMaiden pointed out, it wasn't getting done. However, the last time I used that term was when I had a job with a medical device companay. I thought maybe, it was a term used in regulated industries. I guess not.

Carol,

Nice allusion to the Law of Identity. Sometimes we all get to worried about names and titles and not the actual activity.

[Jim Webb]

We have daily meetings that review the scrap in our machine shop. There are representatives from the machine shop, our foundry, and QA (reviewing vendor items). Like the others, review was not getting done until we had a formalized meeting. In addition to correctly identifying the source of defective product these meeting have become a great source of entertainment. There is no pride in ownership and the altercations that result rival the Ali – Foreman matches.

[Jim Biz]

I set up a MRB in our plant > (we called it IRB- Incident Review Board)

Sad part was after I > opushed to elect a chairperson > turned the reins over to "the group" after ex-plaining (training) their roles in disposition/ Root cause analysis > Corrective action decisions etc. - the clear Barirers . Percieved (that Top Mgt would not support their decisions) all but KO'd any action they were willing to take.

IMHO > Review boards are "one" good way to go IF the business culture will allow them to work...