Company control plan vs. Part control plans ?! help

[mrsluke]

This is one area I am still foggy. When potential customers ask for your company's control plan, I'm not clear on what they want. A sample of the control plans we use for parts?
Sorry to sound dumb, I really do have experience in QC.

 

[Cari Spears]

Welcome to the cove, mrsluke.

Sorry I can't help - I could only guess that they mean "Business Plan". "Company" control plan is a new one on me.

 

[IEGeek - 2006]

One of things we had to come up that was called a control plan was a "Business Continuity Recovery Plan" . It had the basics, for example, how would we continue to supply our customer in the event that all this rain in CA washed our building away or who to contact in case of an emergency. etc etc etc

On the other hand there is the Preliminary Process Control Plan as part of the APQP process, which is a standard control plan relating to the part we are quoting.

I beleive that SOX has a Control Plan as well, although that is predominately financially driven with reporting structures, accountability matrices, etc.

There are many types of control plans.

Just some thoughts.....

 

[Jim Wynne]

This is one area I am still foggy. When potential customers ask for your company's control plan, I'm not clear on what they want. A sample of the control plans we use for parts?
Sorry to sound dumb, I really do have experience in QC.

You need to find out what they're asking for from them, because they are apparently using nonstandard terminology. Generally, control plans and quality plans are part or project specific. If a potential customer asks for something and you don't understand what they mean, don't hesitate to ask. It will save you a lot of grief down the road

 

[Wes Bucey]

If a potential customer asks for something and you don't understand what they mean, don't hesitate to ask. It will save you a lot of grief down the road

Amen! "Faint heart never won . . ."
This is all part of Contract Review. Each supplier has to be sure it understands customer requirements. What better way than to ask when the requirements are ambiguous or confusing?

 

[michelle8075]

Probably APQP

"This is all part of Contract Review. Each supplier has to be sure it understands customer requirements."

I agree with most posts that say that Control Plans are the Quality plans and are in part of the APQP requirements.

For our organziation, we don't use the APQP example of a control plan, rather we first utilize the contract review process and have a method of getting all customer requirements up front, we then have Project Books, which have all sorts of fun APQP stuff in them (i.e. FMEA's, Customer Requirements, Time lines, Design Review information/sign offs, shipping information & requirements, basically the entire job and how we ensured at each step to conform to customer requirements).

Anyway, it sounds like you should clarify with your potential customer what they are truly asking for. I don't think you would sound stupid asking, and it shows that you are really concerned that your company wants to go above and beyond in meeting their requirements. You can say something like "Just to make sure that we are on the same wavelength here, we define control plans at our company as....... is this what you require?" This should help define what they want vs. what you think it is.

Welcome to the cove!

 

[Paul Simpson]

This is one area I am still foggy. When potential customers ask for your company's control plan, I'm not clear on what they want. A sample of the control plans we use for parts?
Sorry to sound dumb, I really do have experience in QC.

What it may be (and I agree with all the others about asking your customer exactly what they mean) is that some companies have a generic control plan that covers all goods - e.g. goods inwards inspection, process audits, final inspection and test. The company may get into specific controls then for individual parts / equipment.