ISO 9001 Scope of Registration - Company sub-contracts everything

[M Greenaway]

If a company manufactures nothing in house, but sub-contracts it all, would their ISO9001:2000 certificate scope still have to inlcude manufacturing processes if they contractually supply some manufactured goods (even just assembly) ?

 

[howste]

Your scope wouldn't have to include manufacturing if you don't do manufacturing. That would be silly. Their scope could include distibution of manufactured goods though.

 

[M Greenaway]

Why so silly ?

As far as I know they manufacture, they tell me they can supply an assembled product, assembled to my specification.

 

[howste]

Maybe I misunderstood what you were asking. I thought your question was "do they have to include manufacturing in the scope?" If they are doing assembly, they could include manufacturing in the scope.

 

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Ok... How about Iso9001:2000, clause 4.1:

Where an organization chooses to outsource any process that affects product conformity with requirements, the
organization shall ensure control over such processes. Control of such outsourced processes shall be identified within the quality management system.

/Claes

 

[howste]

Maybe some clarification of my point is in order. You can only include within your scope what you actually do. Ensuring control over outsourced processes is not the same as doing them. If I design circuit boards and have someone else build them, I can't include manufacturing of circuit boards in my scope even though I am ultimately responsible for the quality of the boards to my customers. If I design a disc drive, outsource the manufacture of the circuit board and other components to someone else, then do the final assembly in-house then I can include manufacturing in the scope.

 

[Bumpebe1]

This is interesting. How about this scenario.

We produce chemcials as our product. We send some of our product to another company (toll manufacturer) to further process our product, i.e., grinding. We also have some companies (toller) produce a product for us. The toller produces the product by our process, we send them the raw materials to make the product, the bags/drum and our labels. The scheduling of production and ordering of raw materials at the tollers is a function conducted at our manufacturing site. (This activity is covered under our existing procedures for scheduling and procurement.)

A colleague of mine keeps stating that we should add toll manufacturing to our scope. My stance is not to. Imo this is an outsourced process.

Oh yea, the owner of this process is at another site.

Comments please.

 

[howste]

I agree. It sounds like an outsourced process that shoudn't be added to your scope.

 

[Al the Elf]

Outsourced processes

We also manufacture chemicals and have many bits "outsourced" as our scope often is constrained to discrete manufacturing units who get services (that are critical to delivery of customer requirements) from both internal and external suppliers.

We thus make quite a great play of our "boundary management" issues, with reference as Claes highlights to clause 4.1, to demonstrate that we've told the supplier what we want and that we've assessed that we're getting a satisfactory service.

I've often agreed phraseology for registrations such as "the supply of products to the ink market"

Speaking as a customer, I'm struggling to find reasons to be concerned about if my supplier has registered manufacturing activities - I'm really only concerned that my requirements are delivered. If that supplier has outsourced manufacturing, I'd simply expect them to have a system that makes sure my needs are still being met by their subcontractor.

Cheers, Al.