Cascading (Flow Down) Customer Specific Requirements

[Roelof]

One of our automotive customers publishes the CSR of their customers on their supplier portal. In their Supplier Quality Manual they simply state that suppliers need to revise and comply with those requirements and that they need to cascade them down to their suppliers.

This way they require us to implement the CSR from their customers and make our suppliers implement them.

In my opinion the CSR from their customers are to be used in the relation between those customers and them. If there are items in those requirements that need to be passed on to their suppliers they need to decide which items of those requirement need to be implemented by their suppliers and how. In the same way we need to decide how we will implement their requirements and for which items we will need our suppliers to implement something. That’s the way I see cascading.

I want to reject this clause with the argumentation above.

Is the above pure laziness of our customer or this a regular practice?

 

[UncleFester]

Standard stuff - beware of clause 8.4.3.1 which requires you to cascade 'all applicable requirements' down the supply chain to the point of manufacture.

 

[Roelof]

I know the clause, and for me the word "applicable" is the keyword.

Simply telling your suppliers they need to comply with the CSR from Ford, Daimler and VW doesn't work. That makes it a paper requirement, suppliers have to say OK or will lose the business so they will say yes to something they don’t understand.
That’s not quality assurance, its bureaucracy. It will not help improve the supply chain.

I think this is closely related to understanding your processes and the related risks. Part of those risks will require supplier development.

So you need to translate the requirements from your customers in requirements for your suppliers where you need them to comply.