An ISO/TS16949 Registration Maintenance Diary

[Icy Mountain]

Ready, set...

Lots and lots of training in April. Refresh every single team member's understanding and knowledge of the standard and our written procedures. The best offense is a good defense. The Quality Management System is sound, although the Quality Manager may be losing his marbles.

 

[Icy Mountain]

...re-cert

I can't believe it's been 3 years. Here we go with my 4th ISO Certificate and 2nd TS certificate!
Findings (only 5!, paraphrased and redacted to protect the innocent):
Section 7.4.2 Purchasing Information
Failure: Purchasing information does not always describe the product or service to be purchased. Also, evidence does not always exist that purchasing requirements are reviewed for adequacy prior to release.
Evidence:
1) Purchase order for calibration does not include requirements for a calibration record, traceability, label, accuracy, tolerances and notification of out of tolerance conditions.
2) 2 of 3 purchase orders reviewed were not signed as is the established the practice to show evidence of the review of purchasing requirements.

Section 7.4.3.2 Supplier Monitoring
Failure: Suppliers are not always monitored to all of the indicators required by the TS 16949
Evidence: Incidents of premium freight are not being monitored as part of supplier performance.

Section 7.6.1 MSA
Failure: The analytical methods and acceptance criteria used shall do not conform to those in customer reverenced manuals on measurement system analysis. Other analytical methods and acceptance criteria have not been approved by the customer.
Evidence: The R&R studies conducted for some attribute gages where not performed having the operators measure the same pieces with the same defects more than once as implied by the MSA Manual, thus not allowing the repeatability to be determined.

Section 6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training
Failure: The required competencies and the associated records have not all been defined.
Evidence:
1) The requirements for all interviewed Electronic Technicians take a test is not defined.
2) The records of education and experience, which are defined in newspaper adds not in job descriptions, are not identified.

Section 7.6 Control of monitoring and measuring devices
Failure: Measuring equipment is not always safeguarded from adjustments that would invalidate the measurement result.
Evidence: Fluke meters X and Y did not have a "calibration void if seal is broken" label over the screw for the back cover where calibration adjustments are made.

 

[Icy Mountain]

And the answers, please...

Section 7.4.2 Purchasing Information
What an easy bust! I know better. Alright, add automatic language to PO's to our calibration and validation suppliers with bullet-proof language about what they need to supply. For Pete's sake, we have proof that they are A2LA certed to 17025. Shouldn't that be enough?
If I feel froggy, I'll post the language that gets accepted.

Forgot: We added some language in the procedures to make sure all Purchase Orders get signed. They are already printed and filed and, mostly, signed.


Section 7.4.3.2 Supplier Monitoring
Oh, for the love of Nancy! I now have a checklist at incoming inspection so that if any of our Automotive Suppliers ship premium freight to us, and pay for it themselves, we can keep track of the "incidents". How else would we know?

Section 7.6.1 MSA
My technicians are very smart. When doing short-form attribute data, I would send the first trial down with 3 failures then I would change number of failures for the second trial (sometimes it was 0 to keep them on their toes). Apparently, you should send down the exact same failures, just in a different order, to establish "repeatability". So I will redo all of my short-form attribute analysis for about 25 torque wrenches, oscilloscopes, and high pot testers. Also, off goes Icy Mt. to Detroit for MSA manual training with AIAG. Maybe I could get a customer waiver to allow me to use my method?

Section 6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training
Finding appealed. Appeal granted. Finding Removed. Newspaper ads and other tools used to screen new recruits do not constitute requirements. We have skills matrices, per IATF guidance on 6.2.2, everything is documented 8 ways to Sunday. We cannot and do not require college education for our team members. We have too many great engineers and techs that do not hold advanced degrees to add that kind of requirement to our standard descriptions.

Section 7.6 Control of monitoring and measuring devices
And that is why I am no longer using my old calibration supplier. I suppose I shall add a requirement for "don't mess" stickers to my calibration PO language. Also, we do have some fused and battery operated equipment that we may need to open between calibrations to change a fuse or battery. Adding some language to the procedures to note that this was done, no adjustments were made, and replace the sticker.

 

[Icy Mountain]

Any suggestions?

Anybody want to take a crack at these? The Maintenance Diary is getting a little stale, especially with an entire cycle almost completed. The findings and actions are getting down into the weeds and rather esoteric.

I'll stop back by and let everyone know what the results are but I expect that we'll have this closed in a couple of weeks.

 

[Marc]

Re: Any suggestions?

The Maintenance Diary is getting a little stale, especially with an entire cycle almost completed.

Ah, but so much good information!

 

[Icy Mountain]

I answered all the findings from the Re-cert audit today with root cause, corrective action, systemic corrective action and a bunch of evidence. We shall see.

 

[ralphsulser]

I answered all the findings from the Re-cert audit today with root cause, corrective action, systemic corrective action and a bunch of evidence. We shall see.

I just did the same thing last week for our Re-certification. The auditor accepted my answers for the 3 minors.

 

[Icy Mountain]

I just did the same thing last week for our Re-certification. The auditor accepted my answers for the 3 minors.

Congratulations, Ralph! I got my list back with a request to be more specific about root causes. Here we go.

 

[roseking]

Good diary!

 

[Icy Mountain]

Re-certified!!!

Finally, a smoke signal from our auditor today letting me know that the evidence has been reviewed and the findings will be closed. WE HAVE RE-CERTIFIED!!!

Section 7.4.2 Purchasing Information
We added language to PO's to our calibration and validation suppliers with bullet-proof language about what they need to supply. We embedded this in our ERP system so that it prints whenever we generate a PO to these suppliers. The exact language is over in this thread.

Also, we have our buyers signing every PO before it is filed. I have a gatekeeper that checks for signatures before filing. Before anyone hollers, we were already printing and filing a paper copy of (almost) every PO.

Section 7.4.3.2 Supplier Monitoring
I now have a checklist at incoming inspection so that if any of our Automotive Suppliers ship premium freight to us, and pay for it themselves, we can keep track of the "incidents". The number of "incidents" will be reported quarterly at Management Review.

Section 7.6.1 MSA
Redid all of my short-form attribute analysis for about 25 torque wrenches, oscilloscopes, and high pot testers. Also Icy Mt. is registered for for MSA manual training with AIAG on July 15th.

Section 7.6 Control of monitoring and measuring devices
We added a requirement for "don't mess" stickers to calibration PO language. Also, we added some language to the procedures to assure that battery changes, fuse replacements and such like on calibrated equipment are observed and recorded (and the "don't mess" sticker replaced).