AS9100 Flow-downs for COTS

[xnabelle]

Hello everyone, I hope we're doing well.
I have a questions about flow downs. The majority of what we manufacture is COTS items. If we had already ordered components, like contacts, to make generic product, we get an order with flow downs, since we already had the components in stock, it wouldn't be possible to demonstrate that we flowed down the requirements, because the order was already received and the product is being used. How would we go from there? It would not be possible for us to work on an order to order basis, we just order a bunch of contacts and use them as we need them; we can't order 50 for this order and 10 for the next one and so on. If anyone has experience with this and could help I would really appreciate it, thank you!

 

[John Predmore]

Who is asking you to flow-down requirements? Are you asking a general question or do you have a particular situation to ask about? Have you already accepted the purchase order?

 

[xnabelle]

This is a general question. This is the case for a lot of our orders.

 

[John Predmore]

In general, Commercial Off-the-Shelf items are often excluded from flow-down requirements. This is because the supplier making contacts for you, is making contacts for other customers/industries in the same batch, same processing, same business practices. If the supplier you buy contacts from is a distributer, not the manufacturer, your source has even less control over the parts you buy.

You must read carefully your customer's supplier quality requirements and PO terms and conditions before you accept any order [AS9100 8.2.3.1). If your customer does indeed require flow-down of all requirements to COTS components, well, that is part of the reason the Defense Department ended up with the [proverbial] $400 hammer.

 

[mattador78]

In general, Commercial Off-the-Shelf items are often excluded from flow-down requirements. This is because the supplier making contacts for you, is making contacts for other customers/industries in the same batch, same processing, same business practices. If the supplier you buy contacts from is a distributer, not the manufacturer, your source has even less control over the parts you buy.

You must read carefully your customer's supplier quality requirements and PO terms and conditions before you accept any order [AS9100 8.2.3.1). If your customer does indeed require flow-down of all requirements to COTS components, well, that is part of the reason the Defense Department ended up with the [proverbial] $400 hammer.

Dont forget the CofC for the calibration of the hammer which is twice the price of the $400 purchasing price.

 

[ChrisM]

You need to go back to your customer and point out the issues, and discuss them/it with them, not simply accept their order as received; this is a fairly fundamental part of what used to be called "contract review".