Bill Ryan said:
Always welcome and I invite others in on the critiqueing (sp?) also.
NOTE: At times, with some of our customers, emotion has come into the "discussions" (both theirs and mine

). I do hope to keep that aspect out of whatever ensues.
I hear you. The reason I asked was that I didn't want this to seem like an attack, especially on an individual or his work and there's nothing worse than unsolicited advice. I'll also disclaim by saying that this is only one page of an 89-page document, so the observations are limited to what I can see. Keep in mind I'm not suggesting that you should change anything; if you and your customers are happy, that's the important thing. And if you do change something your customers have already signed off on it could open a worm can that's better left shut. So this is really in the spirit of helping others, and you are to b e commended for allowing me to use your document as an example

.
The page you posted addresses receiving verification. I advise our suppliers to stick with potential failures that are caused in the operation in question. In other words, insofar as the
PFMEA is concerned, I'm not especially interested in sub-supplier errors because they are not
controlled by the receiving verification process. I want to see what can potentially go wrong in
my supplier's process. In this case, it's possible that "bad" material may be accepted, or "good" material may be rejected. Depending on materials procedures, it's also possible to misidentify incoming material. I want to see the controls in place for those possibilities.
The other thing I noticed is that the potential causes listed are essentially the same as the modes. For example, the potential failure mode of "Sow chemistry inaccurate" is essentially repeated as the cause--"Supplier sent out of spec material." The first rule of thumb in PFMEA construction is that failures don't cause themselves. The problem here also speaks to my first observation; it's not possible to identify the cause because it's a sub-tier error; what I want to know is how that material is kept from being accepted (the potential failure mode of
your process).
I'm very interested in general feedback on these observations. I'm not big fan of the AIAG/SAE PFMEA documentation, and I've developed a general strategy for job shops to use in their PFMEA processes which I believe is more effective than what AIAG asks for. I'm in the early stages of writing an article on the subject which I might post here in the future. Again in the spirit of helping others and making a small contribution to the BOK I appreciate your willingness to participate.