Electronic Industry Contract Manufacturing - Customer notification needed?

T

tuas11

The company I am working is supplying products to the electronic industry and just recently, the company have decided to shut down one of the product lines and get a contract manufacturer to produce it for us. This means that all equipment, manufacturing and testing will be removed.

However, the product manufactured by the Contract Manufacturer will be in our packaging and carry labels with our company name.

Questions:

1. Do we need to notify customers of this change under "change of manufacturing location"?

2. Should we treat the contract manufacturer as a subcontractor and do the rules for subcontractor development applies? This may be a bit difficult as we have no capability to monitor the contract manufacturer product and we do not intend to do so anyway.

This is the first time I am encountering a contract manufacturing situation so any advice will be most appreciated.

Last but not least, this is really a great forum and you can find answers to almost any quality related questions!
 

apestate

Quite Involved in Discussions
Welcome to The Cove, tuas

I do not know more about the specific situation than it seems you have gleaned already. It seems like you have made the correct assessment by the two questions you have raised, but I cannot make an affirmative response to either...

Could you explain to us what requirements you must meet for your customer and for your internal operations? For example, your post was not in any specific standard discussion forum, so I wonder what standard is applied, TS-16949, for example?

What are the requirements placed upon you by the customer? You have referenced a "change of manufacturing location" clause, is this part of their supplier quality assurance requirements?

In TS-16949, the change of manufacturing location would be handled under Customer Notification in PPAP-3, 3.1. "The organization shall notify the authorized customer representative of any planned changes to the design, process, or site." In your case this would be categorized as a change of supplier.

In ISO 9001:2000 and Tropical Storm-16949 there are requirements for purchasing product. Section 7.4 outlines these requirements. The rules for supplier development would apply. Verification of the supplier's product and monitoring of the supplier's performance would also apply, in the case of supplying under TS-16949 requirements.

What standards and requirements must be met? For example, you could say that you are a TS-16949 registered tier 1 to Onyx Vehicles and the product is a vacuum control circuit with safety critical requirements, and we would be much better able to have a discussion about it.
 
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