Supplier Certification records vs. Purchase Order

[NeilWhitlock]

I am a purchasing agent at our organization. I was told by our external Auditor (AS9100) that the address on our purchase order must match the address on the suppliers ISO/AS Certificate. Is this correct? In a lot of cases we buy from large distributors with hundreds of sales offices and usually only the corporate HQ and their warehouses are certified. Also my accounting department prefers to have the pay to address on the PO. What is the best guidance on this? I always have stellar audits and I want to make sure I keep the trend going.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

If there is a requirement (either self imposed or externally mandated e.g. by Boeing who requires AS9120 from distributors) for the distributors to be certified and a multi site distribution organization does not have all sites certified, how do you ensure the hardware is coming from a certified site. So, the auditor is not totally wrong, but there is more than one way to resolve this and not necessarily what the auditor “suggests” (actually something s/he should not be doing)

 

[NeilWhitlock]

In our case we can use both certified and un-certified suppliers with a supplier evaluation. For most cases we have a match between supplier PO address and ISO/AS Cert. but with larger organizations usually the Cert is for the distribution facility. Now on the packing slip for the material it lists the distribution facility so to me we are in compliance in that we can trace the material back to the certified facility. I was just caught a little by the insistence that the address on the PO had to match. It seems like this is not the case then?

 

[Golfman25]

In our case we can use both certified and un-certified suppliers with a supplier evaluation. For most cases we have a match between supplier PO address and ISO/AS Cert. but with larger organizations usually the Cert is for the distribution facility. Now on the packing slip for the material it lists the distribution facility so to me we are in compliance in that we can trace the material back to the certified facility. I was just caught a little by the insistence that the address on the PO had to match. It seems like this is not the case then?

Seems like the auditor asked ”the answer.” What ever the requirement is, per sidney above, there may be several ways to comply. So how do you comply with the requirement? If you can do so without the address on the PO, you’re good.