Customers as Suppliers
From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:39:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Customers as Suppliers /Staples/Naish
<< From: Staples: Has anyone had any experience with customers as suppliers. Chrysler stamps a part which is shipped to my company, welded into our assembly and then sent to a Chrysler assembly plant. I have been accumulating defects from the Chrysler stamper and when pushed, they will give an RMA number for disposition, but I have never yet seen a corrective action report or containment activities. Does anyone have any suggestions? >>
Patricia,
As one auditor recently asked one of my clients: Why don't you stop using them? Just a little humor here folks!! It is not likely that you can do that.
Have you thought about not paying your bills until you get the corrective action? Don't know that it will work. But one of my clients years ago tried it with their customer who in turn didn't pay their bill so it was a tit for tat process that still provided no response.
Years ago when I was at Intel we were in a sort of similar situation. We had a customer who required us to use their bare board supplier. We had continual quality problems with them. What we did was call a meeting including the management, engineering, and quality staff (at least one from each discipline from each company). We sat and discussed the problems, the causes, and agreed on a plan to correct the problems. In our case our customer did not have the capability to correctly generate the film need to ensure proper layer registration and hole alignment. So we agreed to do the artwork at our customer's expense and send it to the supplier. Many but not all the problems went away in this cooperative venture. Perhaps getting a team with at least quality and engineering and production management together from the three facilities even if 2 are the customer's with a brainstorming session may help.
Phyllis Naish
From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:39:47 -0500
Subject: Re: Customers as Suppliers /Staples/Naish
<< From: Staples: Has anyone had any experience with customers as suppliers. Chrysler stamps a part which is shipped to my company, welded into our assembly and then sent to a Chrysler assembly plant. I have been accumulating defects from the Chrysler stamper and when pushed, they will give an RMA number for disposition, but I have never yet seen a corrective action report or containment activities. Does anyone have any suggestions? >>
Patricia,
As one auditor recently asked one of my clients: Why don't you stop using them? Just a little humor here folks!! It is not likely that you can do that.
Have you thought about not paying your bills until you get the corrective action? Don't know that it will work. But one of my clients years ago tried it with their customer who in turn didn't pay their bill so it was a tit for tat process that still provided no response.
Years ago when I was at Intel we were in a sort of similar situation. We had a customer who required us to use their bare board supplier. We had continual quality problems with them. What we did was call a meeting including the management, engineering, and quality staff (at least one from each discipline from each company). We sat and discussed the problems, the causes, and agreed on a plan to correct the problems. In our case our customer did not have the capability to correctly generate the film need to ensure proper layer registration and hole alignment. So we agreed to do the artwork at our customer's expense and send it to the supplier. Many but not all the problems went away in this cooperative venture. Perhaps getting a team with at least quality and engineering and production management together from the three facilities even if 2 are the customer's with a brainstorming session may help.
Phyllis Naish