Inconsequential nonconformances

[Golfman25]

If you don’t track it, how do you know it is just a few pieces? Parts don’t get inspected before moving to inventory, what, in itself is a bad practice. They pick 20 today and find 2 scratched. Tomorrow they pick 15 and find another 2 defective. They could be having 150,000 DPPM with the “impression” it is only a few bad parts.

Experience. I have a customer who does this. They log every "defective" part - one here, one there (usually damaged in shipping or something). They send us boatloads of paperwork. Sometimes after 12 months, we'll do a "big credit" for the bad parts -- a whopping $5.95. It's a complete waste of time.

We make small parts. Several thousand per box. Less than $0.20 ea. I am looking for systemic failure. If I send a box of parts with a good percentage marked, scratched, or damaged, that tells me there's an issue in production (extremely rare). If I get 1 or 2 pcs. per order, and I can see the pictures, I can tell the box was manhandled by the shipper -- edges will get damaged. DPM is fine. But if it's a $10 problem, it's still only a $10 problem. You have to know your process, your parts, and your customer.

And pretty much 100% of my parts are on dock to stock these days -- they don't get inspected before moving to inventory. We are kind of good at what we do.

 

[Golfman25]

this is exactly what i am trying to do. i just don't know what terminology to use for the reason. for example, if we investigate a potential NC and find that the NC is not valid, we log it as "NC Not Valid" with an explanation such as "Part found to meet spec" so I'm just at a loss for how to log something that is a valid NC, but we just don't think the cost outweighs the effort. we disposition it as scrap or sometimes rework and move on because it costs less than doing a full investigation.

The NC is still "valid." But maybe you can just use "NA" for the explanation or if you need to be more descriptive "not cost-effective." Something along those lines.

 

[LoBo.]

If you don’t track it, how do you know it is just a few pieces? Parts don’t get inspected before moving to inventory, what, in itself is a bad practice. They pick 20 today and find 2 scratched. Tomorrow they pick 15 and find another 2 defective. They could be having 150,000 DPPM with the “impression” it is only a few bad parts.

we do track it. we open the NC and track it. the system we use allows for and Origin, Cause and Category. we categorize it as Scratches so we can track total amounts scrapped and/or reworked during any given interval. my issue is we don't do a full investigation on each NC to determine origin and Cause. we would generally open a CAR at the end of the month if the number was high.

my concern is that during an audit an auditor may hit us for leaving Origin and Cause blank.

 

[LoBo.]

we do track it. we open the NC and track it. the system we use allows for and Origin, Cause and Category. we categorize it as Scratches so we can track total amounts scrapped and/or reworked during any given interval. my issue is we don't do a full investigation on each NC to determine origin and Cause. we would generally open a CAR at the end of the month if the number was high.

my concern is that during an audit an auditor may hit us for leaving Origin and Cause blank.

We do AQL inspections on all parts and 100% on some if required. most of these are after they come back from the plater /painter, we only do an AQL at at receiving inspection. when we pull the parts for orders if we find a scratched part we put it to the side and at the end of the lot we do an NC for the few parts that we found scratched. we could do a full investigation each time to determine if they were scratched by the vendor or by our inventory staff, but the cost would be more than the parts are worth.

 

[Bev D]

To repeat you do NOT have to do a ‘full investigation’ or corrective action on every NC occurence. You only do it if you feel that it is useful for you

 

[Golfman25]

we do track it. we open the NC and track it. the system we use allows for and Origin, Cause and Category. we categorize it as Scratches so we can track total amounts scrapped and/or reworked during any given interval. my issue is we don't do a full investigation on each NC to determine origin and Cause. we would generally open a CAR at the end of the month if the number was high.

my concern is that during an audit an auditor may hit us for leaving Origin and Cause blank.

Never do anything for an auditor. But in this case, a simple NA should alleviate any concerns.

 

[Golfman25]

To repeat you do NOT have to do a ‘full investigation’ or corrective action on every NC occurence. You only do it if you feel that it is useful for you

With the caveat that your internal procedure doesn't require such investigation and corrective action. Been there, done that.