RMA and Warranty vs Repair Procedures

D

dwend

Reviewing and retooling our RMA processes and soliciting some inputs on how others manage customer returns. We have one product line that has an equal mixture of repairs for out of warranty issues (mostly normal wear) and warranty issues. Problem is that the warranty and repairs get fed into the same assembly operations as new product and I am concerned about "nonconforming" material being mixed in with conforming material. Also the issue of how we handle customer owned property. Looking into a tagging procedure similar to our nonconforming material process. It would be easy to say all RMA's get tagged by quality etc but I only want to be involved in warranty items. So questions are related to control of RMA product within the facility and methods of segregation and identification.

Thx in advance...
 
S

ssz102

from your text, yourself had realized the reasons to cause the current situation
the major question is: you didn't seperate the RMA products and warranty parts including identification;
i suggest the production line need to be split
 
D

dwend

Yes that has been proposed but the economies of scale and avaialable resources make that unlikely at this time. I am implementing a TAG system but am curious as to how others treat RMA units within the facility in general Also related is the treatment of customer owned property and related handling.
 
L

lfrost

Yes that has been proposed but the economies of scale and avaialable resources make that unlikely at this time. I am implementing a TAG system but am curious as to how others treat RMA units within the facility in general Also related is the treatment of customer owned property and related handling.
In our facility our repair functions are separated from the manufacturing functions. Then the customer's property is separated from the newly manufactured items. We did this because the repairs and returns were quite small and only a couple of technicians were needed to keep up with the repairs and returns.

Now that our company is experiencing rapid growth, we decided to keep the operations separate because of the regulation to keep customer's property separate.

My industry is the medical device industry, so the separation is very important.:yes:
 
D

dwend

Propsal going forward is to require all RMA units to be placed in red totes upon receipt at the facility along with RMA paperwork. They will be processed next to regular units in black totes. All parts removed will remain in totes with unit until buyoff where they will be delivered to quality for disposal. We have several other procedures (in process tracking, ERP, FA etc) but this is a usuable solution for us. Thx
 

cferrer

Involved In Discussions
In our company there is discussion about where does the Returns and Repairs process below (in customer support, logistics, sales). There is even the suggestion that the RMA process itself be a purly oversight process ran by a quality employee. Isnt it common to have this type of "after market" process come in from the customer support and have the paperwork and overall coordination stay with customer support while other sub-processes get called to perform their part, i.e. diagnose and repair, replace and ship or dispose?? Where does the returns process belong? It is an End-to-end process? it is an operations process or an oversight process? should returns be treated together with repairs or separately?

Thanks for some input.
 
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