Wow, thanks, everyone for responding. Great information here. To give a little more detail and hopefully answer some of your questions while still protecting my company's and the supplier's info, I can say that our supplier audit procedure does not classify nonconformances into major or minor. A finding is one of three things: positive comment, nonconformance, or a concern. Some may interpret this as positive, major, minor. We only require a response to the nonconformances, while we may follow-up on concerns in a future audit.
This supplier had recently undergone a restructuring/regrouping at a "corporate" level, so there was some shifting of personnel/positions. In the process, some job titles were changed and/or eliminated/expanded, and as happens sometimes, procedures weren't updated accordingly. And also as sometimes happens with the shifting of staff, procedures weren't followed in all cases. Add to that the fact this supplier provides a service and does not manufacture a product for us, which is in itself a bit different.
Oh, and add to all of this the fact that the account manager/general manager is extremely customer satisfaction driven, and not so much one to follow procedures and document everything (although, he is very responsive and quick to make things happen, he didn't document those actions, as he should have), so that all communication was via phone and/or email. It was difficult for them to provide objective evidence (records, etc.) that procedures were followed, although we knew that the issues we had previously had been resolved because we monitor incoming shipments from our suppliers. There simply wasn't enough evidence to connect the dots.
So, I'm rewriting the audit report in a way that is specific and more detailed than the original version. Hopefully, the revised report will be acceptable.
Again, thank you to all who took time to respond. This is why the Cove is my favorite go-to source for help!
