To corrective action or not to corrective action........

[magneto259]

Hello All,

I am newer in the supplier quality world. But I am not new to the world of quality. What are some typical guidelines you guys follow when you are determining whether or not you are going to issue a corrective action for a non conformance? We generally will issue a CA for obvious damage, test failures, repeat issues, etc. I'm told its to my discretion and judgement on how to apply it. We do have some sole source suppliers we are told to take it easy on, of course unless its a show stopper. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Scanton]

It depends how simplistic you want to go?

I suppose the simplest rule of thumb would be “anything that gets to you (that really shouldn’t) that has the potential to cause a major problem for you and/or your customer”.

Obviously, a minor problem repeating can be a reason raise one too e.g. I wouldn’t complain about a single bent bar in a ton bundle of 5mm bars. If it happened more than once I would e-mail them and ask if they could do something about it and if it kept happening after that I would raise a corrective action request.

What industry you are in would also have a bearing on where you draw the line as some industries and much more lenient than others i.e. if your ice cream cone develops a small crack you are not going to kill anyone however if your break line develops a crack the outcome could be very different.

 

[magneto259]

Hello Scanton,
I agree with your methodology. I wouldn't necessarily get all bent out of shape either on something like you mentioned except a fair amount of what we get is built to print parts and most have decent lead times. So i used to look at the corrective action as a tool to keep them honest knowing it will hit their supplier rating and if its going to impact our schedule, we will issue a CA. I am in the aerospace industry.

 

[Golfman25]

I am of the opinion that If I am looking at a systemic issue via root cause and corrective action, I have to show a systemic problem. Thus, it should be repetitive enough (either in batch or between batches) to show a systemic issue. A single "bad part" that looks like it was run over by the lift truck doesn't qualify.

 

[magneto259]

Hello Golfman25,
We do get a fair set of repeat offenders. We are not a high rate production facility. The parts we get are generally needed when they come in to satisfy an immediate need and some are extremely complex and expensive. It seems like it takes a year or two and we get a repeat from certain suppliers. We always make them apply their "fix" across all like parts to produce for us so we don't see the same issue crop up in a different part. So what I guess what I'm saying is one bad part can be detrimental to the production schedule. It seems like some supplier feel there is an acceptable level of nonconforming parts that should have no affect on their score. Some things are trivial like part marking. We generally mark them in the shop to make them to print but that costs money and that's not what they agreed to send us when they signed off on the PO. Am I being too hard line in my thinking? Are nonconformance's really that plentiful and common across all industries? I am on the side of the line of making sure the one off issues are written up so they don't become a larger reaching issue in the future. Now I'm not issuing every part a corrective action, but I am notifiying the supplier to put a plan together to fix the problem. Sorry for the rambling lol.

 

[Golfman25]

Hello Golfman25,
We do get a fair set of repeat offenders. We are not a high rate production facility. The parts we get are generally needed when they come in to satisfy an immediate need and some are extremely complex and expensive. It seems like it takes a year or two and we get a repeat from certain suppliers. We always make them apply their "fix" across all like parts to produce for us so we don't see the same issue crop up in a different part. So what I guess what I'm saying is one bad part can be detrimental to the production schedule. It seems like some supplier feel there is an acceptable level of nonconforming parts that should have no affect on their score. Some things are trivial like part marking. We generally mark them in the shop to make them to print but that costs money and that's not what they agreed to send us when they signed off on the PO. Am I being too hard line in my thinking? Are nonconformance's really that plentiful and common across all industries? I am on the side of the line of making sure the one off issues are written up so they don't become a larger reaching issue in the future. Now I'm not issuing every part a corrective action, but I am notifiying the supplier to put a plan together to fix the problem. Sorry for the rambling lol.

Notification is ok. A lot will depend on the part, the cost, etc.

 

[magneto259]

Notification is ok. A lot will depend on the part, the cost, etc.

I am just trying make sure we are applying industry CA's properly. My counter parts in the office have more experience but only one has extensive Supplier quality experience from the CA / CAPA / Auditing side. She has decades of automotive experience and is a hardliner. I gather most of my insight and direction from her as the others don't typically do much in the CA side of supplier quality.

 

[Golfman25]

I am just trying make sure we are applying industry CA's properly. My counter parts in the office have more experience but only one has extensive Supplier quality experience from the CA / CAPA / Auditing side. She has decades of automotive experience and is a hardliner. I gather most of my insight and direction from her as the others don't typically do much in the CA side of supplier quality.

Use the George Constanza rule -- do the opposite of everything your automotive counter part suggests. (Based on recent noteworthy automotive issues, I am not sure they are the best source for quality ideas).

You need to do what works for you. From my experience, a full CA for every little problem is overkill and leads to just filling out forms. That's why I like to see a systemic, repetitive type of issue, that has a decent amount of risk/value to it. Quality of Corrective actions vs quantity of corrective actions. Good luck.

 

[gakiss2]

I was an SQE a couple of years ago. It was important to me that my suppliers were at least aware of the problems and preferably put a part in their hands. But I didn't call for a SCAR on a lot of them. Many suppliers want to fix problems and if they are ISO, they are supposed to do a CAR on their own.

An issue that is important to this question is how much bandwidth do you have to work with them? By this I mean that if you push a blue million SCARs out to suppliers then how are you going to keep up with them. Especially if you are new, suppliers will test you and try to let them linger to see if you will call them out on it. If you don't then they know there is a chance you've forgotten about it. On the other hand, you will get better results if you engage with them and have some back and forth. If you try this with too many issues then you overload yourself and even suppliers that want to get better will get frustrated.

Be judicious about which ones you pursue. Better to pick a few and run them to ground than to push out too many and get almost nothing to show.

This is getting long so, only one more point. Don't be afraid to pick out a chronic issue then volunteer to help them through a vigorous corrective action process. You may end up doing 80% of the work but if it ends up being a real CA that permanently kills the issue then it was worth it.