Assignment of Special Characteristics to government regulations

[franmcca]

In my company there is a difference of opinion about assigning a special characteristics to government regulations (ie; , FMVSS 108 for US, or REACH for EU), or safety (FMVSS 302) if the customer has not assigned a special character. We all agree that it is probably in our best interest to do so, but looking for whether or not it is "Mandated" by ISO, IATF, or AIAG or any other regulatory body. Looking for how other companies address this issue.

 

[Mikey324]

What is your process for identification of special characteristics? IATF 16949, 8.3.3.3 "The organization shall use a multidisciplinary approach to establish, document, and implement its process(es) to identify special characteristics, including those determined by the customer and the risk analysis performed by the organization, and shall include the following:"

It sounds like you have, at least a few, special characteristics already identified by your company. Since you have identified some safety and compliance realted items, why not identify them as a special characteristic? In my opinion it would only be helpful. You most likely already monitor these (IATF 8.3.3.3b). Adding increased awareness of their importance (FMEA, Control Plan, checksheets, etc) seems logical.

 

[franmcca]

Yes, we have identified, and are monitoring several special characteristics. Upper management is asking for whether or not ISO, IATF, or AIAG or any other regulatory body specifically designates that the "Organization" (my company) assign some specific character, such as to a regulatory (FMVSS 108, ECE) or safety (FMVSS 302) characteristic. I have read the standards six ways to Sunday and have not found any such "mandate". But the question keeps coming up. Maybe this question is just a sanity check for me to make sure I am not missing anything in the standards. Checking in with a larger sample size of the quality professional population

Again, we do have our internal process for identifying spec chars, and always assign per customer requirements.

 

[Mikey324]

I completely understand. Also, in the Quality field, a sanity check is unnecessary, as we all must be crazy...

As a company, you can identify special characteristics any way you want, as long as the customer doesn't specify. We actually us an *. It gets the job done for us. No questions from our customer and it was completely acceptable during our IATF audits. I hope this helps!

 

[GRP]

In my company there is a difference of opinion about assigning a special characteristics to government regulations (ie; , FMVSS 108 for US, or REACH for EU), or safety (FMVSS 302) if the customer has not assigned a special character. We all agree that it is probably in our best interest to do so, but looking for whether or not it is "Mandated" by ISO, IATF, or AIAG or any other regulatory body. Looking for how other companies address this issue.

To contribute to your benchmarking, have a look at what Ford says:

Special Characteristics are those product or process characteristics (CC, SC, OS, and HI) that affect vehicle or process safety, compliance
with government regulations, customer satisfaction, or process operation.

 

[Johnnymo62]

The government requirements are a Severity level 10 rating in the AIAG FMEA blue book, requiring an inverted delta or CC depending on the customer's PFMEA standards. My experience with Ford is these are called out on drawings and SCAAFs.