Quality supervisor1
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Is engineering a process and should it have its own process turtle?
Is engineering a process and should it have its own process turtle?
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malasuerte
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Can you expand more on what "engineering" means in your world?
But, in general, yes, it can be considered as such and you could do a process map for it. Depending on your orgs maturity, it could be beneficial.
By definition, a process is any activity or set of activities that transform inputs to outputs. So your process map(turtle) could be high level for "engineering" and then the individual processes that make up "engineering" could have their own.
Quality supervisor1
Starting to get Involved
Hello Malasuerte
Engineering as in designing parts to meet final customer drawing, we are forging and machining shop. Our engineers also design tools (die and punch) for the presses.
None of our IATF auditors have questioned why engineering is not listed or considered as a process, this was brought up by our internal auditor.
malasuerte
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Got it - It is probably not of 'value' to map it out then. If you have the individual processes mapped out, that is grand and it should provide value.
John Predmore
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I disagree. If your company designs parts, tooling or manufacturing processes to meet customer requirements, there is value in mapping out your design process. Not only is your design process "beneficial", design is part of the way you create value for your customers. and by looking at the big picture QMS you strive to monitor and continuously improve your design process to be most efficient and effective. The IATF auditor may not have questioned a missing design process document because many fabrication shops only machine-to-print and exclude design from their QMS. If the outside auditor started with what you gave him, it may not have been obvious what was missing.
In many companies and on their projects, engineering is the discipline delivered by engineers to the design process that translates customer needs into specified requirements for services, products and processes.
Service design is growing in its importance to customer delight.
Service design is growing in its importance to customer delight.
malasuerte
Quite Involved in Discussions
There was no discussion about not mapping out the design process or no value to it; The question was about mapping out the highest level "Engineering" process/group/department/whatever.
It is certainly great value in mapping out the processes themselves. Or the "Design" process.
But just doing a process map on the Engineering group may or may not be of value...it depends on the org.
Ron Rompen
Trusted Information Resource
'Engineering' on its own is not a 'process' - for me the litmus test for anything is the ability to say 'go and (whatever) today. You can say 'go and audit', or 'go and scrap parts', but you can't say 'go and engineer'. There are processes WITHIN the engineering department that should (IMHO) have their own process maps/turtles. You could (if you wanted to) put those all together as an 'overview' of what the engineering departments functions are
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