Good day
@LexiH22 ;
I would council that your management system should be set up to handle applicable product safety characteristics if/when the situation arises. For example, what if your sales team quotes a product that has safety critical process or product characteristic identified on the drawing? Who reviews this (during feasibility study?). If the job is accepted how is this characteristic/process identified at the point of manufacture? Who is responsible? If a problem arises with a safety critical process or product characteristic, what is the escalation plan? Who is responsible? If your organization accepts a job with safety critical characteristics or process, who reviews to see if there can be an impact by your external providers? Who is responsible for communicating these to your external providers.
If you are an existing automotive tier manufacturer, I would assume that there are existing controls within your process, to which these considerations can be added without creating something entirely new.
For example: An IF-THEN decision tree (i.e. IF the customer identifies a safety critical process and/or product characteristics) simply allow the decision tree to identify WHO does WHAT and WHEN. This could be applied to...
1- Initial feasibility study (should we take this job? If so, what are the risks?)
2- APQP process development
a) Identify internally what characteristics/processes apply
b) Communicate externally to any affected external providers (purchasing identifies? quality verifies? )
3- Nonconforming product control
a) point to a determined IF-THEN escalation diagram as part of the reaction process
These are simply provided as food for thought. But in my experience, it is hard to predict today what sales may commit to tomorrow.
Hope this helps.
Be well.
