Tracking Subcontractor Premium Freight

[freeda]

We just had our first surveillence audit of our purchasing department since the QS9000 third edition came out. We received a nonconformance for not tracking our subcontractors premium freight. We do an excellent job of tracking our own, but do absolutely nothing to track our vendors. We currently have several QS customers, only one of them asks for us to provide any premium freight information to them. They send us a sheet once a quarter that asks if we had any premium freight charges that was not billed to them. We fill it out and send it back to them.
We are at a loss on how to handle this requirement. If anyone has any ideas on how to track this, please let me know.
Do we only have to track premium freight for the vendors that supply us matter for QS parts? We make both automotive and non-automotive. And is it only for those vendors listed on your Approved Vendors List?

 

[Carl Scaringelli]

I received the same finding. Perhaps we have the same auditor.

We had originally sought to cover this requirement by requiring that our subcontractors keep records available upon request. This did not fly.

What we now do is to have every packing slip / bill of lading go through purchasing for review prior to sending to accounts payable. This review doesn't take long as the carriers for expedited frieght are usually known.

Our auditor did not require that we track the cost of subcontractor freight only that we track when it occurs.

 

[ml retcher]

We track excessive and premium freight from our suppliers by requesting them to report this through our yearly survey. We added one simple question "What was the cost of excessive and premium freight your facility paid to ship product to us in the past 12 months?"
Our auditors did not have a problem with this. Many of our suppliers do not report any costs but we did meet the standard.

 

[Dick Bidgood]

On the subject of Sub-contactor premium freight- we added the requirement to notify us to our Purchasing Terms and Conditions.
The auditor accepted this -although none have notified any costs.