Customer Corrective Actions - Replying with 'No corrective action needed'

[Wes Bucey]

I was reading back through some old threads 'enhancing' some thread titles and checking for deal links and I came across this oldie but goodie. Just thought I'd bring it up for added discussion.

Have you replied to a customer with No Corrective Action Needed? What was the customer's response?

In my later years, I became very political in dealing with CARs from customers.
It seems to me that a large percentage of customer-initiated CAR (as many as 20%) were due to customer error in inspection or handling/installation. An equal percentage were just silly (one-time orders where the nonconformance was signed off by customer engineers, but some form-happy clerk wanted a CAR.) A small percentage of CARs (1% - 2%) we NEVER satisfactorily determined the root cause and failed to detect any other examples of nonconformance.

In every instance, regardless of the merit of the CAR, we documented a ritual of investigation:

1. Confirm the nonconformance with our own inspection
   (if we couldn't confirm, we would conference with customer, sometimes involving 3rd party inspection services, until we confirmed or until customer acknowledged his error.) If customer error, process stopped.
2. Determine if root cause investigation were economically feasible (often it was not for one-time custom orders.) If not, offer replacement or refund and stop process.
3. Conduct root cause investigfation when economically feasible.
4. Determine if corrective action is feasible and within our capacity and capability. (If not, this was reported to customer and process stopped.)
5. Perform corrective action, evaluate, and report to customer.

It is important to note we NEVER broke communication with the customer throughout the process. When I am the customer, the worst thing a supplier can do is leave me in the dark about the progress of a CAR. I have more respect for the guy who tells me to drop dead than the guy who tells me nothing.

 

[Missileman - 2009]

I was looking over some old post while I'm sitting in the hotel room and came across this one.

What's interesting is the customer mentioned in the original post is who I work for. While I did not originate the SCAR, my group did. I enjoyed the comments presented here. I don't remember the final outcome of the corrective action as it's been too long and many SCAR's ago, but I believe the inspection was increased at the distributor.

Prior to sending the SCAR to a supplier, we investigate the defect and have a team meeting to discuss all the possibilities. We evaluate whether a written response is required or not depending to the circumstances. Unfortunately, our suppliers may not know what we are seeing as problems in our business and what our customer is telling us.

The reason we do 10 day cycles is because we can't afford to have a catastrophic failure during a mission. If there is a problem, we need to know quickly. A bad nut will destroy a missile just a easily as a major sub-system, not to mention the potential problems for the war fighter.

In the previous post by Wes Bucey, "It is important to note we NEVER broke communication with the customer throughout the process. When I am the customer, the worst thing a supplier can do is leave me in the dark about the progress of a CAR. I have more respect for the guy who tells me to drop dead than the guy who tells me nothing." As a customer, that is a continuing problem for us. When we issue the SCAR, we talk to the supplier about the defect, possible corrective action and the due date. Then we call prior to the due date to make sure the supplier is working on the response. If the supplier misses the date, they are subject to being removed from the Approved Suppliers List until it's resolved. That action can be prevented with communication but it should come from the supplier.