Supplier OTD Slip Due to Shipping Delays or Natural Disaster

[darkopsghost]

What is the common consensus on Suppliers that have had OTD Slip Due To Shipping Delays or Natural Disaster Delays?

We are an FAA/ EASA Repair Station but we are also an AS9110 certificated MRO. As part of our QMS slippage due to Natural Disaster is missing from our Purchasing Procedure. I created it to point to our Terms & Conditions which does describe DELAY IN DELIVERY for items prior to shipping and still under the controll of the supplier, but does not address delays after shipping which they have no control over.

Procedurally speaking, anything that slips 1 to 3 days I create a PA and anything over 3 days drives a CA and is driven by my Target Attainment Plan Goals and is tracked in my KPI spreadsheet. I do not think that I can close either type of CAPA with "Act Of God", but maybe I can... IDK.

Per the Standard, 9.3.2 Management Review Inputs, c. information on the performance and effectiveness of the quality management system, including trends in: 7. the performance of external providers, and 8. on-time delivery performance.

Has anyone experienced something similar in the last year and a half and how did you improve your QMS to address such issues without changing a bunch of documents or is this not a big issue since it did not affect our delivery time to the end customer which drives the monitoring of supplier trends anyway?

I pride myself in being short and sweet with my writing and I will not include pages of direction which tends to paint oneself into a corner that is sometimes harder to get out of than the original predicament.

Thank You All In Advance!
Ghost

 

[Sidney Vianna]

I do not think that I can close either type of CAPA with "Act Of God", but maybe I can... IDK.

Force majeure (Covid-19 pandemic) is what allowed "remote audits" to be widely accepted under the IAQG ICOP certification scheme. No organization in the world can control tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, etc... and, obviously, significantly increasing inventories to minimize supply chain disruptions is business-unwise. If the root cause of supplier OTD performance decline is outside one's control, there is no point in triggering a corrective action, in my estimation.

 

[darkopsghost]

That's what I was thinking myself, but since I don't have a Force majeure clause in my Common Clauses, I didn't know if most auditors would allow such exclusions. Maybe I'm just over thinking it. Thank You Sidney!