Small Welding Shop going for AC7004 (NADCAP)

[KIDDO]

Good day all

Just a couple of "what if" questions for those of you who have been through a Nadcap audit. We're just a small welding shop who will be going for AC7004. My questions are:

1) If we have (50) welding jobs currently in production but only (7) of them are specifically for Nadcap, could we be sure that the PRI auditor would only want to audit the Nadcap jobs and not ALL of our welding jobs?

2) Who would Nadcap consider to be our prime? The customer that WE supply directly to or our customer's customer?

Much appreciated

Kiddo

 

[Sorin]

Re: Ac7004 question

1.In theory, the auditor can request any job on the floor as he can request only the Nadcap related jobs (I had them both).

2.I would say it's the owner of the drawing.

 

[dsanabria]

Good day all

Just a couple of "what if" questions for those of you who have been through a Nadcap audit. We're just a small welding shop who will be going for AC7004. My questions are:

1) If we have (50) welding jobs currently in production but only (7) of them are specifically for Nadcap, could we be sure that the PRI auditor would only want to audit the Nadcap jobs and not ALL of our welding jobs?

2) Who would Nadcap consider to be our prime? The customer that WE supply directly to or our customer's customer?

Much appreciated

Kiddo

Just curious,

Are you implementing NADCAP because you see a marketing need for it or are the customers imposing this requirement?

 

[KIDDO]

Re: Ac7004 question

1.In theory, the auditor can request any job on the floor as he can request only the Nadcap related jobs (I had them both).

2.I would say it's the owner of the drawing.

So in theory, the PRI auditor may look at any one of our welding jobs even though they are not related to Nadcap?

 

[KIDDO]

Just curious,

Are you implementing NADCAP because you see a marketing need for it or are the customers imposing this requirement?

It's both actually. The weld jobs that we are doing are for defense.

 

[Sorin]

Re: Ac7004 question

So in theory, the PRI auditor may look at any one of our welding jobs even though they are not related to Nadcap?

Yep...he's auditing the process. O/c he's auditing the parts too, especially in relation to customer requirements (drawing, PO, etc).

As I said, I had both situations: one auditor asked for 6 jobs with at least 3 Nadcap related (primes) and he chose 4 Nadcap and 2 non-Nadcap; another auditor asked for all jobs to be Nadcap related.

But the bottom line is that your porcess is being audited too, not only the parts per se.

You may also consider if your procedure(s) is making a distinction between Nadcap and non-Nadcap jobs. If the way you process parts is the same (the big difference being in customer requirements) than the auditor will treat the parts/ process the same.

Another thing that is quite overlooked is the conformance between yopur procedure/WI and what is going on in real life. A discrepancy between procedure and real process is de facto a Major.

 

[KIDDO]

Re: Ac7004 question

Yep...he's auditing the process. O/c he's auditing the parts too, especially in relation to customer requirements (drawing, PO, etc).

As I said, I had both situations: one auditor asked for 6 jobs with at least 3 Nadcap related (primes) and he chose 4 Nadcap and 2 non-Nadcap; another auditor asked for all jobs to be Nadcap related.

But the bottom line is that your porcess is being audited too, not only the parts per se.

You may also consider if your procedure(s) is making a distinction between Nadcap and non-Nadcap jobs. If the way you process parts is the same (the big difference being in customer requirements) than the auditor will treat the parts/ process the same.

Another thing that is quite overlooked is the conformance between yopur procedure/WI and what is going on in real life. A discrepancy between procedure and real process is de facto a Major.

Thanks Sorin. We supply our customer, who then supplies to one of the Primes. Does that matter? Because we are lower in the food chain, I wasn't sure.

 

[Sorin]

Re: Ac7004 question

Thanks Sorin. We supply our customer, who then supplies to one of the Primes. Does that matter? Because we are lower in the food chain, I wasn't sure.

Yep...we are in the same situation (castings), sometimes the PO is coming from a company who is doing the machining and assembly for a prime. So the initial PO is from Prime and the 1st receiver of the PO is flowing down the requirements to his suppliers (we and you amongst others).

 

[KIDDO]

Re: Ac7004 question

Yep...we are in the same situation (castings), sometimes the PO is coming from a company who is doing the machining and assembly for a prime. So the initial PO is from Prime and the 1st receiver of the PO is flowing down the requirements to his suppliers (we and you amongst others).

So do you follow the Prime's customer requirements or your customer that you ship to? The reason I'm asking is we are making up our WI/procedures with guidance from a consultant. He has referenced American weld standards, along with AS9100, in the procedures and we don't feel, as a Canadian company, that we should have these standards referenced.

I'm waiting on guidance from PRI on that scenario.

 

[andygr]

The fun flows down hill
We require all of our suppliers to carry Nadcap if they choose to sub out the special process our contract/po requires them to pass the fun on such that whom ever in the food chain performs the special process is Nadcap approved.
When that shop is audited the auditor should identify the direct customer that the audited shop deals with and also us as the prime customer.