Hopefully supply to GM - What should a small 4 person company do

[cazman]

I could use some help. We are a small company (4 people) that will hopefully supply to GM. We do not have any quality program. We need one fast. Basically, we design, market, and build some small components to be suppplied to customers. All of our "big" stuff is out-sourced to large manufacturers and then dropped to our customers.

GM says we should have a APQP program to manage our vendors and we also need to be TS very soon.

Where should I start?

Have a consultant do a manual for us?

 

[Kevin H]

Cazman - First, take a big breath - to become ISO/TS registered, you need one year of quality system operating information compliant with the ISO/TS requirements to show your auditor. If GM is very demanding, develop and present a plan to them, for example:
1. Implement APQP as they have requested - say 3 months. First step is to buy the manual from AIAG (Automotive Industry Action Group) - their web site is www.aiag.org. The manual is actually fairly good, and has decent ideas underlying it.
2. Develop & implement an ISO 9001:2000 compliant quality system - goal is say 6 months for help, either use a consultant, check with your local chapter of ASQ (the American Society for Quality-www.asq.org) to see if they offer new companies help, or check with local colleges for low cost aid.
3. Operate the quality system, shake out the bugs, etc. for 6 months while deciding on a registrar for ISO 9001:2000 (check the IAOB web site (www.iaob.org) as well, because if/when you upgrade to ISO/TS it will be easier if you keep the same registrar - it's also easier if you can keep the same auditor)
4. Continue to operate the system for 1 year total, and plan for your registration audit to ISO 9001:2000 - complete the registration process.
5. Do a gap assessment between ISO 9001 & ISO/TS 16949 & devlop a plan to address the gaps between the 2 standards.
6. Address them, and upgrade your system to be compliant - 5 & 6 could reasonably take 6 months.
7. Get the 1 year under ISO/TS required for registration & schedule and plan your upgrade audit to ISO/TS.
8. Total time from nada to ISO/TS registration - roughly 3 years. Considering the # of people in your company, I think that's a fairly agressive time table.

While doing all the above, keep coming to the Cove - consider becoming a paying member to access the additional documents that are available for use in quality system development, and use other quality contacts, either a consultant or local help such as colleges and ASQ.

This is a bare bones outline of goals, and I'm sure GM will want something more detailed with names and responsibilities. I'm also sure many others in this forum will be able to offer more information/help than this bare outline.

 

[Kwilson]

Need Help

Cazman,

I'm not sure where you are in New york, I'm in Buffalo. Check your PM's for my contact information, I'd be more than happy to meet with you and give you some ideas to get you started.

Kevin W

p.s. I'm not a consultant, but would be more than happy to help if possible

 

[cazman]

Thanks, that is some good advice. One Question - Why use a ISO 9001:2000 system first then go to TS, can't TS stand alone from the start?

 

[Kevin H]

Hi cazman, my thoughts regarding the progression are based on the following:
1.All elements/requirements of ISO 9001:2000 are included in ISO/TS 16949. ISO/TS also has a number of additional elements included that can be somewhat demanding, especially for a small startup company.
2. I interpreted your initial post as indicating you/your company as being somewhat unfamiliar with starting/using a quality system. Based on that, I looked at it as a process similar to an infant learning to walk - first you crawl, then you walk, then you run.
3. You can obtain positive reinforcement at each step you take towards ISO/TS 16949, thus helping (hopefully) to make the system truly useful for your company and meeting GM's requirements.
4. By spreading it out, you don't necessarily reduce total mandays needed to develop and implement the system, but you do minimize their impact somewhat.
Just for some background, we upgraded our company (160 employees over 3 sites) from joint registration to ISO 9001:2000 & QS-9000 (ISO/TS's predecessor) to joint registration to ISO 9001:2000 and ISO/TS 16949 last year. Even with many things in place, that's where most of my time & my manager's time was spent for the first 6 months of the year.

Hope the additional information helps.
Kevin H

 

[Kwilson]

stand alone

Also, TS 16949 does not stand alone because it is a Technical Specification, whereas ISO is a standard. It is merely an automotive industry extension to the ISO9000 standard.

Kevin W

 

[tomvehoski]

An additional reason for ISO 9001 over TS. TS is very strict on applying only to manufacturing sites. You have to build something to qualify. It sounds from your first posting that you don't do much, if any, actual manufacturing and outsource all of it. For example, I work for a very large corporation at a HQ location - design, marketing, HR, and so on. We are audited as a support site to our manufacturing locations in Mexico and listed as such on the certificate. We could not have our own stand alone certificate.

I set up a 3 person company a couple years ago with ISO 9001: 2000 without much problem - pretty simple system, about 8-10 procedures of 3-5 pages each. They only did design, purchasing, etc. and outsourced all manufacturing (containers) and services (trucking). They were planning on going to TS when they grew to include a sequencing/assembly shop, but I left the consulting world before I could help them out.

If you implement ISO + APQP you should be able to satisfy your customer. It will also help you avoid additional costs, headaches and other issues of TS that does not always fit well with a small company. If you grow to include more manufacturing down the road, you can always upgrade to TS, and having ISO already will reduce the audit day requirements.

 

[cazman]

OK, I see the light now. I like this 8-10 procedures and 3-5 pages each from tomvehoski idea. Would AIAG have something as simple?

 

[tomvehoski]

I built my templates into a "ISO 9001" toolkit we tried to sell. I am sure there are dozens of these on the internet, plus I am sure you can find a lot of great stuff here.

With various no-competes, confidientally agreements, etc. I signed I really can't post the actual procedures, but I will take a look at which ones I set up. I'm out of town this week (Huntsville, AL) and don't have access to my archive to check, but I think I set up procedures for:

Q Manual - 10 to 15 pages
Design
Corrective/Preventive Action
Supplier Approval / Purchasing (important since heavily outsourced)
Training (not so important since all 3 employees were also owners)
Audits (I performed as their consultant - easier than training them)

There are a couple others I am forgetting, but overall I don't think we had more than 50 pages of documents, most of which were flowcharts.