Process Improvements to Prevent Scratches on Aluminum Parts

[UncleFester]

Curious to know if customer concerns rose since the start of production. Was the customer initially happy with the product in terms of absence of scratches and scuffs? Or have complaints since risen? Originally you could have had a good process but did familiarity and contempt creep in since the beginning?

Either way, the consideration for having internal packaging to move product around the shop could have been an initial cost factor.

Do you have boundary samples agreed with your customer as to what can be considered an 'acceptable' scratch?

 

[Kurt Smith]

Curious to know if customer concerns rose since the start of production. Was the customer initially happy with the product in terms of absence of scratches and scuffs? Or have complaints since risen? Originally you could have had a good process but did familiarity and contempt creep in since the beginning?

Either way, the consideration for having internal packaging to move product around the shop could have been an initial cost factor.

Do you have boundary samples agreed with your customer as to what can be considered an 'acceptable' scratch?

So far I think the complaints have actually fallen. We are a secondary supplier on these parts. So our customer is assembling them and passing them on to the shared original customer of the design. I believe when this first started they were holding us and themselves to the highest possible standard as they were still trying to secure the contract.

It doesn't help that the original customers specification is fairly vague on these parts. What constitutes a scratch that causes a non-conformance and what is acceptable is simply never defined. (I believe it is a print error that the correct specification is not called out to define it. But they haven't changed it despite our asking.) We have been forced a few times to send questionable parts due to time constraints and have not received push back since the PPAP was accepted. So we are starting to suspect they were unclear what the original customer expected at the start.

If you look at a previous comment of mine I shared a PDF with an example of a boundary sample.