How to handle changed Customer Specifications or Requirements

[Marcelope]

How to handle changed Customer Specifications

Question:

We have a major Quality Concern where our rootcause analysis do not show any evidence for non-compliance to the specification as in the approved PPAP (1999).

Although we now found out that specifications were changed by the customer in 2002, and that we didn't implement this change we can not find any evidence that we were informed about the change , we never confirmed receiving nor accepting the new spec.

This changed material spec however should have prevented a.m. Quality Concern

Since more and more customers are working with internet publications and automatic notifications of changed specification, but what's that worth in a court of law?

TS:2002 demands an evaluation within 2 week after receiving, but what is meant by receiving.....

Marcel

 

[SteelMaiden]

Question:

We have a major Quality Concern where our rootcause analysis do not show any evidence for non-compliance to the specification as in the approved PPAP (1999).

Since more and more customers are working with internet publications and automatic notifications of changed specification, but what's that worth in a court of law?

TS:2002 demands an evaluation within 2 week after receiving, but what is meant by receiving.....

Marcel

My first action in investigating this problem would be to check if the orders were received/entered referring to the new spec revision.

My second step would be to see if any agreements have been made about how the customer notifies you of new specifications.

If either of those things have happened then it would appear someone at your facility may have dropped the ball and you need to figure out how and why.

If the customer does not call out the specification to be followed on their purchasing documents, THEY are the ones who are not following the requirements of the standard. Since you refer to TS, it would seem that you are involved with automotive, and that your customers should be following the automotive standards, no?

In my experience, the customers that are adamant about their specs, send out revisions and ask for a documented confirmation that you have reviewed them for capability. We also had people that sent specs whenever they felt like it, meaning when their customer complained about not meeting a spec. There were items that we produced for 2 years or more under outdated specifications. If they don't send them, you cannot manufacture to them.

Find out where and when the problem occured. If it is not something that your company had control over, go to your customer and using your best PC voice, tell them that you want them to consider your relationship as a partnership and how can the two of you make sure that a spec revision is never missed again.

 

[Marcelope]

I agree with you. Most of the time our customers don't mention revisionnumber on their drawings. That however could then lead to discussions like: "always the latest".

Problem is in the automated way of communicating these matters

marcel

 

[Bob_M]

I agree with you. Most of the time our customers don't mention revisionnumber on their drawings. That however could then lead to discussions like: "always the latest".
Problem is in the automated way of communicating these matters
marcel

From a cover our A** point of view, the customer really should be asking for some kind of verification that revisions where received.
If your are TS and PPAP are used, why did the CUSTOMER not request a resubmission against the revision?

 

[howste]

I had a customer that was supposed to send me a hardcopy and transmittal every time one of their drawings changed. Later they made their drawings available through an electronic system, and they made us (me) periodically verify that we were using the latest print. It was a royal pain, but we had to do it. Once a week I had to log onto their system and verify every drawing that we used.

The Ford CSRs sound pretty similar to this also:

Where the organization uses Ford documents / instructions or other documents of external origin, the organization ensures that the appropriate revision level is used – this is either the most current version available from https://fsn.ford.com/ or FSP (Ford Supplier Portal) or as specified by Ford Motor Company.