Crimpshrine13
Involved In Discussions
We recently had IATF renewal audit, and one of the findings was related to corrective actions. My apology for a lengthy post.
The biggest problem is that we cannot close out the corrective actions from last year that was issued to our parent company.
We're tier 2 automotive company (100%), and while we produce approximately 50% of the products we sell to our customers, the remainder of the 50% comes from our parent company.
Last year, there had been repeated quality issues that could not be fixed, so we decided to visit them to conduct the 2nd party audit (full system audit), which generated 28 nonconformities in a hope things would improve a little bit, but it kind of backfired on us during the external audit. There were overwhelming amount of nonconformities, which most of them were more complexed and very obvious that they would not be able to correct the issues in a few weeks. Because this occurred at the end of October, with the consideration of the year end shutdown, I gave them until the end of February to correct them. They sent in the corrective actions, but I rejected because they were all superficial corrections that did not include thorough investigation. They sent in again the revisions, and they were still superficial and it was getting to the point that I did not have time to teach them which were not good for what reason and I kind of stopped providing feedback (because they are so incompetent to correct problems and lacking basic knowledge in quality control/assurance, and I do not work here to wipe their butt and I have a lot of other things that I have to do - we have only 10 employees here). They also have another product related corrective action that is open since March, 2024.
The auditor didn't like the fact that there were too many open corrective actions that were not resolved.
Part of the problem with the auditor was that the rules of setting due dates was not consistent with what we say in the corrective action procedure. In our procedure, we require immediate response in 24 hours, containment and preliminary corrective action in 2 weeks, and permanent corrective action in 1 month. If extension is needed, we add the extension in the corrective action report. That part, we can solve the problem to clarify the wording regarding the due date in the procedure and maybe develop better follow up process. That we can do.
Our problem is, that these corrective actions are generated for our parent company. We are in a business where there is very little competitions world wide, and since it is our parent company, not unrelated supplier, we are pretty much stuck without any options but to keep buying from our parent company. If it was unrelated supplier and we had an option to buy from other companies, it would have much been easier situation. Our parent company is incompetent that issues like this is not uncommon with their other customers that they have corrective actions that are open over a year, yet the management is not motivated enough to correct the problems from the true root causes, and keep making bad parts. It's embarrassing, but that's what it is. Most knowledgeable employees had already retired or quit and there's only a handful of employees who are knowledgeable about the manufacturing process or quality, who are not at the center of suited positions so it is only getting worse each year.
When a parent company is underperforming and you are doing your best to push them to correct the issues yet they are not cooperating, what can be done at our end? It's like beating a dead horse and not going anywhere... I just don't know how we can close out this external audit finding...
Any thoughts and opinions are appreciated.
The biggest problem is that we cannot close out the corrective actions from last year that was issued to our parent company.
We're tier 2 automotive company (100%), and while we produce approximately 50% of the products we sell to our customers, the remainder of the 50% comes from our parent company.
Last year, there had been repeated quality issues that could not be fixed, so we decided to visit them to conduct the 2nd party audit (full system audit), which generated 28 nonconformities in a hope things would improve a little bit, but it kind of backfired on us during the external audit. There were overwhelming amount of nonconformities, which most of them were more complexed and very obvious that they would not be able to correct the issues in a few weeks. Because this occurred at the end of October, with the consideration of the year end shutdown, I gave them until the end of February to correct them. They sent in the corrective actions, but I rejected because they were all superficial corrections that did not include thorough investigation. They sent in again the revisions, and they were still superficial and it was getting to the point that I did not have time to teach them which were not good for what reason and I kind of stopped providing feedback (because they are so incompetent to correct problems and lacking basic knowledge in quality control/assurance, and I do not work here to wipe their butt and I have a lot of other things that I have to do - we have only 10 employees here). They also have another product related corrective action that is open since March, 2024.
The auditor didn't like the fact that there were too many open corrective actions that were not resolved.
Part of the problem with the auditor was that the rules of setting due dates was not consistent with what we say in the corrective action procedure. In our procedure, we require immediate response in 24 hours, containment and preliminary corrective action in 2 weeks, and permanent corrective action in 1 month. If extension is needed, we add the extension in the corrective action report. That part, we can solve the problem to clarify the wording regarding the due date in the procedure and maybe develop better follow up process. That we can do.
Our problem is, that these corrective actions are generated for our parent company. We are in a business where there is very little competitions world wide, and since it is our parent company, not unrelated supplier, we are pretty much stuck without any options but to keep buying from our parent company. If it was unrelated supplier and we had an option to buy from other companies, it would have much been easier situation. Our parent company is incompetent that issues like this is not uncommon with their other customers that they have corrective actions that are open over a year, yet the management is not motivated enough to correct the problems from the true root causes, and keep making bad parts. It's embarrassing, but that's what it is. Most knowledgeable employees had already retired or quit and there's only a handful of employees who are knowledgeable about the manufacturing process or quality, who are not at the center of suited positions so it is only getting worse each year.
When a parent company is underperforming and you are doing your best to push them to correct the issues yet they are not cooperating, what can be done at our end? It's like beating a dead horse and not going anywhere... I just don't know how we can close out this external audit finding...
Any thoughts and opinions are appreciated.
