So Annoyed with Receiving Inspection!

[SimpleIsGood]

Yesterday, my regular receiving inspector was out sick. I filled in for him. Using One Piece Flow, each parts inspection literally takes 30 minutes. That's to get the part number, find and pull the print, print it out, get the required measuring tools, measure one part, inspect to the AQL, sign the paperwork, enter the results in the computer and give the paperwork back to the receiving clerk. That's way too much time for something that is supposed to be right when it comes in the door.

Yet, when I talk to my receiving inspector and purchasing manager about requiring a Part Submission Warrant from suppliers on all dimensioned parts, they both tell me I'm wrong, unreasonable, impractical, can't be done, not fair to our suppliers and on and on.

Here is how I look at it: The supplier HAS to confirm the correct revision level and measurements ANYWAY. Don't they? I mean, they literally HAVE to do this. Why, oh why, can't they document they are doing this and send the documentation with the part? That way, I'll know what drawing the part was made to, have the drawing in my hands, see where they checked it with their results and be able to review their results.

• Is this unreasonable?
• Is this enough evidence of conformance to requirements to skip some of our incoming inspection steps?
• Does anyone else require this sort of PSW from their suppliers?
• Am I crazy, Crazy Like a Fox or just FREAKING CRAZY?

Your comments are welcome.

 

[NikkiQSM]

Do you provide your drawing to the Supplier?

Are the requirements clearly present on the drawing?

Have them agree to provide the parts per drawing and include all drawing numbers on their packing slips.

Have them provide a COA with the parts which state it meets your spec.

Just my thoughts.

 

[SimpleIsGood]

Do you provide your drawing to the Supplier?
Are the requirements clearly present on the drawing?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Yes, we provide drawings. Folks here say, "But then the suppliers make their OWN drawings, so they can't send OUR drawing with dimensions penciled in along with the parts."

Requirements are in a text box, on the drawings.

 

[PaulJSmith]

...the suppliers make their OWN drawings...

We have a metal fabricator who does this with our drawings (from our Solid Models, actually), and yes, it's frustrating. You need to make sure that your supplier(s) understand that regardless of whatever they generate to aid their process, your parts must meet the requirements defined on YOUR drawings and/or POs. It's just that simple. If not, then they are not meeting your needs.

Now, of course, if you allow them to do as they please, you have a whole different problem...which is internal.

 

[Jen Kirley]

What industry are you in? Some customers, like some aerospace manufacturers, may insist on receiving inspection - what have/would have your customers said?

If you can establish confidence that your suppliers present an acceptably low risk of sending you nonconforming parts based on data, it may be possible to establish a "ship to stock" program. What data do you have? Historical performance? Visit(s) to their facility? SPC data from their production stream? Something else? What makes you feel comfortable that they are correctly interpreting your most current drawings when making their drawings?

 

[bluepagen]

I do not think you are crazy. You are PAYING for them to produce parts. If you supply a drawing, then don't you want parts in tolerance to the print?
Go and talk to the suppliers. Ask for inspection sheets, put them on a trial set up to eventually eliminate incoming inspection (because they consistentantly produce in tolerance parts!). Everybody is a winner that way.
But, if you are paying 100% for 90% good parts, then you need to fix that immediately. Return the parts and ask for rework. Scrap what should be scrapped and return for credit to your invoice.
Until you get 100% of what you order and pay for, you are loosing one way or another. Either a long receiving inspection, paying for bad parts, coming up short on what you ordered or working towards a solution. It is not an easy fix, but is fixable! Come up with a workable plan.

 

[normzone]

It's all about risk analysis. Study your numbers and produce a report.

What percentage of incoming are you inspecting? How many nonconformances are you finding? What are the consequences of nonconforming material getting into your food chain? Is your incoming inspection just a formality confirming the obvious or are they finding problems?

Sometimes the occasional disaster prevented by inspection outweighs the cost of looking at all that good product. Other times we're just inspecting because somebody thinks it a good idea. But as said above, you may be required to.

And it's rare that I get to deal with a supplier that will provide detailed inspection reports. Good luck with that.

 

[Michael_M]

What about changing the way you do receiving inspection. Is there a way to reduce the time to perform the receiving inspection?

Depending on your internal requirements, are you allowed to use just the customer data to accept parts or will someone still have to measure the part. If you still have to measure the part, I would look into a different method of gathering tools/prints/data to streamline it.

 

[John Broomfield]

Yesterday, my regular receiving inspector was out sick. I filled in for him. Using One Piece Flow, each parts inspection literally takes 30 minutes. That's to get the part number, find and pull the print, print it out, get the required measuring tools, measure one part, inspect to the AQL, sign the paperwork, enter the results in the computer and give the paperwork back to the receiving clerk. That's way too much time for something that is supposed to be right when it comes in the door.

Yet, when I talk to my receiving inspector and purchasing manager about requiring a Part Submission Warrant from suppliers on all dimensioned parts, they both tell me I'm wrong, unreasonable, impractical, can't be done, not fair to our suppliers and on and on.

Here is how I look at it: The supplier HAS to confirm the correct revision level and measurements ANYWAY. Don't they? I mean, they literally HAVE to do this. Why, oh why, can't they document they are doing this and send the documentation with the part? That way, I'll know what drawing the part was made to, have the drawing in my hands, see where they checked it with their results and be able to review their results.

• Is this unreasonable?
• Is this enough evidence of conformance to requirements to skip some of our incoming inspection steps?
• Does anyone else require this sort of PSW from their suppliers?
• Am I crazy, Crazy Like a Fox or just FREAKING CRAZY?

Your comments are welcome.

SimpleIsGood,

Now may be a good time to involve your colleagues in coming up with a plan to virtually eliminate the need for receiving inspection.

The first step in this plan may be to upgrade your supplier selection criteria (see 7.4.1) so you can trust their verifications.

The second step may be to clearly specify the acceptance criteria so they are returned with the actual measurements recorded by the supplier.

Please let us know what you end up doing.

Good luck,

John

 

[Wes Bucey]

Yesterday, my regular receiving inspector was out sick. I filled in for him. Using One Piece Flow, each parts inspection literally takes 30 minutes. That's to get the part number, find and pull the print, print it out, get the required measuring tools, measure one part, inspect to the AQL, sign the paperwork, enter the results in the computer and give the paperwork back to the receiving clerk. That's way too much time for something that is supposed to be right when it comes in the door.

Yet, when I talk to my receiving inspector and purchasing manager about requiring a Part Submission Warrant from suppliers on all dimensioned parts, they both tell me I'm wrong, unreasonable, impractical, can't be done, not fair to our suppliers and on and on.

Here is how I look at it: The supplier HAS to confirm the correct revision level and measurements ANYWAY. Don't they? I mean, they literally HAVE to do this. Why, oh why, can't they document they are doing this and send the documentation with the part? That way, I'll know what drawing the part was made to, have the drawing in my hands, see where they checked it with their results and be able to review their results.

• Is this unreasonable?
• Is this enough evidence of conformance to requirements to skip some of our incoming inspection steps?
• Does anyone else require this sort of PSW from their suppliers?
• Am I crazy, Crazy Like a Fox or just FREAKING CRAZY?

Your comments are welcome.

As a supplier, I was obsessively customer-centric and did everything I could to make the customer's job of handling my products as trouble-free as possible. This obsession resulted in great customer loyalty. My goal was always to create a dock-to-stock mentality about our goods, by-passing incoming inspection if we possibly could.

NOTE: all our products were custom-made to a customer's specifications (sometimes the specs and designs were changed as a result of our concurrent engineering - discussed in this post.
(broken link removed)
Thus, the following discussion is really only valid for custom-made products.)

As a consequence, we agreed, as part of Contract Review with the customer, on EXACTLY what we would inspect, with what instrument, in what order (feature numbers on engineering drawings) and would report those on a checklist with each shipment.

Usually, this resulted in a columned check sheet with each feature number listed, the instrument used, the result, and a column for the customer to fill in with HIS readings.

If we had a sufficiently large run using SPC, the exact samples would be numbered and attached to the check sheet. Obviously, if desired, the customer could pull his own samples from the shipment as well.

This obsession to detail and precision convinced almost all our customers to rank us as dock-to-stock suppliers, skipping incoming inspection.

We ALWAYS included the engineering drawing of the revision we followed, with the feature numbers, so there would be fewer chances of a receiving inspector, himself, using an obsolete version of the drawing. None of our customers thought it burdensome to comply with our request for collaboration on inspection procedures and reporting. In a converse situation, I don't foresee a supplier objecting with a customer's request for something similar.

View this post
(broken link removed)
for links to a number of pertinent posts on inspection processes.