sardonyx said:
In a design phase, do you require your engineers or requestor to provide the manufacturer's name and manufacturer's part number before you assign a part number to them? One of our engineers said it's not yet required since it may change the design but I used to work in a company that during the design phase I already ask for manfr and manf part nos. And I would like to get your views for the pros and cons before I stand up and convince the engr if he's wrong and he's right I'll follow him. We're still in the start-up process of making control documents like quality procedure and process, etc. to comply with ISO so I need help from you guys....the experts. One more thing, is it ok to include ECR flowchart in a document control procedure? Since our ECR is processed thru a web-based documentation system and there's not much of papers and personal signing involve....it's just probably brief instruction on how ECR is done thru that system. Thanks in advance.
I'm curious if you mean
- "manufacturer" of components that are part of a design
or
- "manufacturer" (customer) who has ordered the design.
For components:
One method which I have seen work is for the designers to create a separate Bill of Materials for the components within a part or an assembly. Part of contract review is to examine those materials in relation to the design to determine whether any proprietary components may be replaced with "generics" or alternates to lower the cost but maintain the function and fit of the design.
Thus said, the Bill of Materials ultimately resembles a grid, with additional columns added for "alternate" materials, until the final design is approved together with a final Bill of Materials. The initial design may be assigned a "tentative" part number (if the organization has a system of numbering which has significant prefixes or suffixes which help identify the part or if numbers are merely assigned on a chronological basis.)
The point is, until final approval by all pertinent parties, the design is still preliminary and not approved for manufacture. Some organizations have a system where the preliminary documents are numbered as they are revised within the engineering department with a revision numbering system different from "Approved revisions." One organization has a part number plus preliminary revisions are numbered "P1, P2 . . . P100" and approved revisons are lettered "A, B, C, . . . X"
For customers:
When a customer requests a design, it seems to make sense to number the design immediately, regardless if the customer has provided his number yet. If the customer subsequently changes his number, so what? It seems simple enough to tie the new number to the design. The name of the customer can change for many reasons (acquisition, merger, whim?) - it's easy to attach the new name to the design.
