Importance of Documenting NCP's and CA/PA's

[PaulJSmith]

I think we're approaching the same idea, just from two different angles. The OP seems to be wondering about what might be missing from the existing date, alluding to a lack of detailed explanation in their existing system. We really don't have enough information here to go beyond what's already been speculated. However, if an employee says, "I just scrapped a $40K chunk of titanium. It is bad. Give me another one so I can finish the job," that's scarcely enough information to make sound decisions.

I got the impression that was indeed the advice the OP was seeking ... regarding the pursuit of better data. Perhaps some clarification from her would help.

 

[Kronos147]

The standard calls for reviewing the effectiveness of corrective actions. Does the Internal Audit substantiate that this is being done? I would imagine that would be a tough one without records.

 

[Christine1105]

[FONT=&quot]I?m sorry if I was unclear in my original post. I imagine this topic has been exhausted over time but I am new to the role so any help will be appreciated. Let me be clear, we have met the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard. Here is the situation I am in. We do not have a quality manager to oversee the quality day-to-day functions. Each department handles quality in their own way and still manages to follow the ISO standard. I would like this system to be beneficial for us ? NOT just to please an auditor. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Our company has been around for quite some time and believe it or not we have never tracked our scrap. Nonconforming parts rarely got out the door but we never tracked the cost of quality. Now that we have a reporting method in place and some history of the scrap costs, I would like more details to assess the processes to prevent future issues if possible (or at least present the ideas to upper management)[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The scrap dollars are captured for reporting purposes but I would like to see more details (who, what, when, where & why) this is what our NCP database is meant to capture.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Early on in our implementation it was decided we would leave it up to the managers to enter NCP?s but only NCP?s that were ?Out of the Norm?. Parameters are very vague. I guess this is more out of curiosity for me. I am an employee that walks in the door every morning wondering how I can save the company money. Maybe it?s naive but I think [/FONT][FONT=&quot]before we say documenting NCP?s is not necessary we should start entering the information to see if the data is beneficial. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Any thoughts? The $40,000 in scrap from 1 department is only a fraction of the total scrap ? we have many departments.[/FONT][FONT=&quot][/FONT]

 

[Ninja]

Sounds like you have a good first data point. Letting everyone enter stuff into a database on their own if and only if they feel like it doesn't work too well.

"You" would like more details to assess the processes.....
Who agrees with you enough to do anything about it?

If not the top dog, can you convince ONE of the department managers to give it a try?
If so, let it run with one person for a while and see if any improvement is gained.
If improvement is gained, now you have a dollar figure saved to use to sell the next one...and the next one.

I do note that tracking scrap sources and tracking NCP & CAPA may be closely related, but not the same thing.
In my experience, using the term CAPA outside of the quality guys increases the risk of stroke. Use "scrap reduction" or "reducing wasted raw material" instead when talking to department managers.

 

[Golfman25]

[FONT=&quot]I?m sorry if I was unclear in my original post. I imagine this topic has been exhausted over time but I am new to the role so any help will be appreciated. Let me be clear, we have met the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard. Here is the situation I am in. We do not have a quality manager to oversee the quality day-to-day functions. Each department handles quality in their own way and still manages to follow the ISO standard. I would like this system to be beneficial for us ? NOT just to please an auditor. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Our company has been around for quite some time and believe it or not we have never tracked our scrap. Nonconforming parts rarely got out the door but we never tracked the cost of quality. Now that we have a reporting method in place and some history of the scrap costs, I would like more details to assess the processes to prevent future issues if possible (or at least present the ideas to upper management)[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The scrap dollars are captured for reporting purposes but I would like to see more details (who, what, when, where & why) this is what our NCP database is meant to capture.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Early on in our implementation it was decided we would leave it up to the managers to enter NCP?s but only NCP?s that were ?Out of the Norm?. Parameters are very vague. I guess this is more out of curiosity for me. I am an employee that walks in the door every morning wondering how I can save the company money. Maybe it?s naive but I think [/FONT][FONT=&quot]before we say documenting NCP?s is not necessary we should start entering the information to see if the data is beneficial. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Any thoughts? The $40,000 in scrap from 1 department is only a fraction of the total scrap ? we have many departments.[/FONT]

It sounds like you want to enter data for data's sake. To me, if you have one department reporting $40,000 in scrap (assuming that is high for your business) then somebody kept some records and made the cost calculation. Go dial down into those records to determine what happened or is happening so they can act to reduce that cost. Re-entering the data into some master database seems duplicative to me.

 

[Christine1105]

Golfman25,

Records have been kept regarding the cost but no records have been kept as to what caused the non-conformance in the first place. This is what I am asking for - that individuals see the importance of capturing detailed information, at least for a specified time period to see if future non-conformance can be prevented. The mindset so far has been, "That will be too much work."

 

[Christine1105]

Ninja,

I like this approach - thank you.

 

[Golfman25]

Golfman25,

Records have been kept regarding the cost but no records have been kept as to what caused the non-conformance in the first place. This is what I am asking for - that individuals see the importance of capturing detailed information, at least for a specified time period to see if future non-conformance can be prevented. The mindset so far has been, "That will be too much work."

That is a lot of work. If you came to me and said lets set up this system to collect data to see if it is worth collecting data, I would look at you funny.

My thought is before you set up a system to collect all this data to see if it is worth collecting, go back to the cost records and see what they reveal. The 80/20 rule probably applies -- you might see only a handful of incidents generating all of the costs. My guess is, even if your people didn't document the cause on the cost record, your operators know what caused the non-conformance so ask them about it. Keep it simple - Maybe you can get them to document the cause on the cost record or only document those instances over a certain cost. Good luck.

 

[pldey42]

Hi Christine1105,

I'd suggest some other changes to lay the ground-work for reducing scrap.

First, I'd drop the burden and instead of thinking, "How can I save the company money?" I'd ask, "How can we save our company money?"

Then I'd drop the fragmented approach of each department doing quality its own way and adopt instead a process approach. (I'd also ask, without a quality manager, what's the management rep's remit?)

Let's suppose that a department called "Final Assembly and Test" scrapped $40k of subassemblies. They don't know why they were poorly made, they just know they were scrap. To find out why they were poor means collaborating with upstream departments through some kind of cross-functional root cause analysis process. If it's not there, or weak, they may resist reporting into the database for fear of getting into interdepartmental conflict, or perhaps without such a process, they can't plan for the time that the analysis will take.

For as long as they perceive it's your mission, alone, to reduce scrap costs they'll leave it to you. If you make it "our" problem and show everyone the benefits of cross-functional collaboration, through processes everyone can plan and allocate resources to, it might get easier.

If you get a process approach adopted, one thing you might consider is to amend the quality policy to specifically mention collaborative scrap reduction as an objective, and your quality objectives to include measurement of scrap and targets for its reduction.

Hope this helps,
Pat

 

[John Broomfield]

Pat,

Excellent point.

Only process-based management systems actually conform to the requirements of ISO 9001:2008 (particularly clause 4.1).

...but I guess it is not necessarily so!

John