Customer special status and initial IATF certification

[tonyfan]

Good day all. My company is getting ready for the Stage 1 audit to IATF 16949 and ISO 9001: 2015. I'm a bit concerned about the number of our customers that have us on special status. Some of the customers are automotive and others are not. What impact, if any, is this going to have on our ability to pass the stage 1 and eventual stage 2 audit?

Some of these special status' are doc auditing at the customer site, while others we are on a "no quote" status. There are others as well, but hopefully this will give you an idea of what we're facing.

I hope I have given enough detail for some direction.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

 

[Golfman25]

Not sure because we haven't been there. But I would suspect it would give your auditor a place to concentrate. I would be looking to see if your system corrected those issues. Good luck.

 

[tonyfan]

Not that I'm aware of.

 

[tonyfan]

I think some but not all issues have been addressed. There is no clear indication that the issues have been resolved yet though, and that's part of why I'm concerned. We are on special status with multiple customers, so I think it would be seen as a system breakdown. Just want my ducks in a row before I take my concerns to upper management.

 

[Sebastian]

According to certification rules you are obliged to inform certification body about customer special status. Section 5.7.1 e)
I did not find any condition where certification decision can't be positive due to customer special status. Section 5.12

 

[Golfman25]

I think some but not all issues have been addressed. There is no clear indication that the issues have been resolved yet though, and that's part of why I'm concerned. We are on special status with multiple customers, so I think it would be seen as a system breakdown. Just want my ducks in a row before I take my concerns to upper management.

Frankly your "certification" won't mean squat if your customers don't want to do business with you. You need to get your customer issues resolved if not prior to starting your audits, at least commensurate with them. Good luck.

 

[tonyfan]

Upper management is aware of the special status, but I don't think they're aware of the potential impact to our certification audit.

This is the first that we are attempting to get TS/IATF 16949 certified. Do our special status' for both automotive and non-automotive have the same impact when it comes to the "Rules for achieving and maintaining IATF recognition"?

 

[tonyfan]

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. Now to address the issues with my Supervisor and upper management.

 

[Golfman25]

Actually, unless things have changed you don't need to clean up your non-automotive issues. Every audit I have been in only focused on automotive issues. We could have 20 issues with our other customers and they would only focus on the 1 issue for our auto customers. So depending on how big of problems they have, they may want to focus on auto first.

 

[Sebastian]

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. Now to address the issues with my Supervisor and upper management.

The best way to thank is use

button. Especially Stijloor deserves it, as he was mostly active in this thread and gave very accurate support.

Edit
IATF issued a SI for "Rules", where in SI #2 they say:

It may become necessary for the certification body to conduct special audits of certified clients:
- to investigate performance complaints (see section 8.1 a) and 8.1 b);
[...]
- to verify the implemented corrective actions are showing improvement in the achievement of the customer performance indicator(s);

I think special status can be understood as performance complaint and organization should be prepared for additional charges related to 3rd part special audits.