jimmymustang06
Involved In Discussions
I apologize up front for the length of this post. Also you'll have to pardon the complaining, but I've found that complaining to other quality folks yields more value than any you can get from the production folks. I'm sure I've learned more about quality standards here than anywhere else. I routinely tell my reports QC mgr., techs, engineers, coordinators if they have questions about clauses in standards, to come search here first. I'd like to hear what others may have done in a similar situation.
I've worked at this company for 35 years, moving from the production floor, QC lab tech, QC mgr., and now Dir. of QA. We are a tier 2 supplier of aluminum tubing (commodity/bulk material). We have a pretty good traceability system; however, it's all for not when a few tier 1 customers lose our traceability the second they start processing the parts we send them. For our traceability, we issue a new serial (lot) number any time a new label is printed. A label is printed in any process that changes the product's dimensions or temper.
I've given up trying to track KPIs such as PPMs because they are always at fractions of 1, # of claims/month or year, etc. I finally settled on quality claim per million lbs. shipped and monitoring YTD values, because there can be a 2-month delay between shipping and time of use at the customer. If a customer has an issue they can provide us any serial number, found either on the parts themselves or on a box that contains multiple parts. From a serial number, we can generate a tree that displays all serial numbers the part/s came from or went into, and trace the product or lot through each step in our production process all the way back to the chemistry analysis of the ingots we received from our supplier. At each step, all data for that part exists in a lookup screen, down to the employee ID that performed that step at the time the product was processed. Using the times/dates from the lookup, we can search PLC data logs and review the pressures, temperatures, timings, etc. observed at each production step. Our problem starts as soon as our customers move parts from their warehouses to their production lines.
With our products being bulk materials, our customers cut our parts down to the finished length, often resulting in thousands of parts. Customers tend to "lose" our label (and its serial number) when they start production. Making the situation worse, many don't follow FIFO very well, if at all. If an issue/defect is identified, it's typically deep into their processing. Since almost every tier 1 pushes zero-defect policies, an issue/defect, even if it only concerns one 6" part taken from one of our parts consisting of 2,000+ feet, we'll receive a quality claim on material without a serial # and have no way to determine when we produced it. We may be able to do a bunch of research in hopes of narrowing the window of time we made it, but there are no guarantees. We once went through a long investigation in the end to be supplied with a 3-year old VIN number. Our T&C's state a 12-month warranty, so we told the customer to pound sand or, "..unfortunately, we're unable to investigate an issue that was created 3 years ago".
To make a super-long post even longer, I have 2 questions I could really use others' insights on.
1) I want to create a form letter stating if a serial number cannot be supplied, a complete 8D cannot be performed. We can define our current controls to prevent the issue/defect, but that's it. What are your thoughts about this tact?
2) I've read the clauses in IATF that reference traceability, but I can't determine if customer's that pitch our traceability into the trash are failing to meet the intent of these clauses? If so, I could work that overlooked requirement into the letter. Note: as far as I know, none of our customers that cause these problems do not supply safety-related parts to the OEMs.
I sincerely appreciate any advice, tips, criticisms, etc.
I've worked at this company for 35 years, moving from the production floor, QC lab tech, QC mgr., and now Dir. of QA. We are a tier 2 supplier of aluminum tubing (commodity/bulk material). We have a pretty good traceability system; however, it's all for not when a few tier 1 customers lose our traceability the second they start processing the parts we send them. For our traceability, we issue a new serial (lot) number any time a new label is printed. A label is printed in any process that changes the product's dimensions or temper.
I've given up trying to track KPIs such as PPMs because they are always at fractions of 1, # of claims/month or year, etc. I finally settled on quality claim per million lbs. shipped and monitoring YTD values, because there can be a 2-month delay between shipping and time of use at the customer. If a customer has an issue they can provide us any serial number, found either on the parts themselves or on a box that contains multiple parts. From a serial number, we can generate a tree that displays all serial numbers the part/s came from or went into, and trace the product or lot through each step in our production process all the way back to the chemistry analysis of the ingots we received from our supplier. At each step, all data for that part exists in a lookup screen, down to the employee ID that performed that step at the time the product was processed. Using the times/dates from the lookup, we can search PLC data logs and review the pressures, temperatures, timings, etc. observed at each production step. Our problem starts as soon as our customers move parts from their warehouses to their production lines.
With our products being bulk materials, our customers cut our parts down to the finished length, often resulting in thousands of parts. Customers tend to "lose" our label (and its serial number) when they start production. Making the situation worse, many don't follow FIFO very well, if at all. If an issue/defect is identified, it's typically deep into their processing. Since almost every tier 1 pushes zero-defect policies, an issue/defect, even if it only concerns one 6" part taken from one of our parts consisting of 2,000+ feet, we'll receive a quality claim on material without a serial # and have no way to determine when we produced it. We may be able to do a bunch of research in hopes of narrowing the window of time we made it, but there are no guarantees. We once went through a long investigation in the end to be supplied with a 3-year old VIN number. Our T&C's state a 12-month warranty, so we told the customer to pound sand or, "..unfortunately, we're unable to investigate an issue that was created 3 years ago".
To make a super-long post even longer, I have 2 questions I could really use others' insights on.
1) I want to create a form letter stating if a serial number cannot be supplied, a complete 8D cannot be performed. We can define our current controls to prevent the issue/defect, but that's it. What are your thoughts about this tact?
2) I've read the clauses in IATF that reference traceability, but I can't determine if customer's that pitch our traceability into the trash are failing to meet the intent of these clauses? If so, I could work that overlooked requirement into the letter. Note: as far as I know, none of our customers that cause these problems do not supply safety-related parts to the OEMs.
I sincerely appreciate any advice, tips, criticisms, etc.
. If you maintain traceability right up until the product is in their hands, there really is nothing more you can do.
