Nonconformance report, Customer complaint investigations and RMAs

[PhilM]

My company has been ISO 9001:2015 for about a year now and we just finished our 1st Surveillance audit. We're a small org (24 employees).

We RMA projectors for our warranty service repairs. The external provider for these has a service request portal online that generates an RMA and tracks the RMA service from start to closure to include shipment date back to our customer. As it is warranty work would it be proper to fill out a nonconforming product report or a customer issue form for this (or both)? Is just using the vendors online portal sufficient as a record with maybe a complaint log? I'm trying to minimize the amount of paperwork without sacrificing the requirements for customer focus, improvement and document control. Let me know if more context is needed. Thanks in advance for the input.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

The issue at hand, from a quality management perspective, is not the paperwork, but in true PDCA fashion, the RMA'ed projectors need to undergo a failure analysis (in case of reported malfunction) to understand if there are any critical/repetitive failures. The result of such analysis should trigger corrective actions that could be design related, manufacturing related, packaging related, etc...Having the most outstanding RMA process in the world will do nothing for the company, if products fail at a high rate. In today's connected world, consumer reviews can make or break a product life cycle, a company or a brand.

Good luck.

 

[PhilM]

Thank you, Sidney. Failure analysis and rigorous testing by the vendor is always done. As necessary, corrective actions are requested and recorded. I'm wondering if I need to fill out our customer complaint investigation form if all of this is already captured and kept as a record on our vendors online service portal. My thoughts are...I could 'point' to their service portal through my customer complaint log. Thoughts?

 

[Sidney Vianna]

I'm wondering if I need to fill out our customer complaint investigation form if all of this is already captured and kept as a record on our vendors online service portal.

If the data related to the customer feedback is captured and ACTIONABLE, then, there is no wisdom in re-capturing it elsewhere. The form should be irrelevant if the data is already available through other means. Hopefully your question is not the result of a canned procedure template that requires a complaint investigation form to be filled out.

In today's digitalized systems, data is as powerful as the applications that capture and allow it's analysis. Forms, especially paper-based forms are quickly becoming irrelevant.

 

[optomist1]

For those who wish to learn....pls advise what "RMA projectors" are...is this a form of a discrepancy or defect prediction tool?

thanks
optomist1

 

[PhilM]

Sidney...if you have the time could you elaborate on your statement about canned procedure template that requires a complaint investigation form? Thanks for info it's helpful.

optimist1...RMA is Returned Materials Authorization and projector is just the specific product being returned. Not a projection (assumption).

 

[optomist1]

yep i get the RMA....ok so projectors is the product....Thanks Phil!!

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Sidney...if you have the time could you elaborate on your statement about canned procedure template that requires a complaint investigation form?

Many organizations rely on "canned templates" to develop their quality system. Most of these canned templates are archaic and refer to forms for this and that. Like in your case, the key thing is to capture the data, so the RMA can be processed, the customer feedback can be acted upon and management can analyse product performance and customer satisfaction.

I have no idea if that is your case (canned template) or not, but as most businesses are unique, so should be their (quality) systems.

 

[PhilM]

Thanks, Sydney. I switched industries and carried on a form I used for ISO13485. I'm in an ISO9001 environment now.