Disposition of First/Last-Off Parts

[yagnik]

What's the standard practice to obsolete first off part as per IATF16949? should I scrap first off part once I validate last off part? or I should keep first-off and last-off part of production run and once next production run first-off part validated then I can scrap previous run first off part?

 

[Jim Wynne]

A lot depends of the production process. For example, where hard tooling is involved (e.g., molding, stamping) it's generally a good idea to keep the last-off sample with the tool so it's available to the toolroom to determine maintenance needs. There's generally no need to keep the first-off part.

 

[Johnny Quality]

yagnik,

To support Jim, I was once in injection moulding. The first off part was kept until the production batch was finished; it was then scrapped. Last off parts were kept until our last off parts bin were overflowing; usually this was at least a year's storage. It helped a few times with kneejerk customer reactions to long standing issues.

You'll have to think about what is best for your situation; but if you have the space and resources to store last off parts in a condition where the are representative of production then you should for as long as possible.

 

[Johnnymo62]

Where I have worked, at the end of the run the verified good first piece was put in finished goods and the verified good last piece was retained until the next run. Then this last piece was put into the next job's finished goods after the first piece for this new run was verified good.