dayladavid
Registered
Let me preface by saying I am a recent grad and the sole quality engineer at a small company so I have very little experience and guidance when it comes to quality.
The situation:
We produce a part X for customer A, who then uses that part as a component in their product for customer B. Due to the nature of the products and the industry (military and government related), we are heavily audited by customer B even though there is no direct contract with them.
Customer A has provided us a drawing for Part X which we must produce to. However, Part X consists of multiple components, and we own the drawings for those components. One of these components, say Component 1, is brazed and welded and it is very difficult for our supplier to meet the tolerances in our drawing, since they are machined tolerances. Fabrication of Component 1 is expensive and currently the bottleneck for our operation, so we try to minimize the number of rejects for that component. Instead, the other components can be altered so that they still meet their individual component drawing requirements, and result in a final assembly that meets customer A's drawing requirements. The only issue is Component 1 won't be within spec according to the drawing. The supplier for Component 1 sends us a NCR and we issue a waiver to accept as is. This happens on about 50% of units. Customer A is aware of the issue and has told us that since they only care about the final product conforming to their drawing, what we are doing is not an issue.
Today Customer B performed an audit and expressed major concern with what we have been doing, which is totally understandable. Ideally, our supplier for Component 1 would be giving us a conforming product every time and we would not have to do alterations. Is there anything in the standards (AS9100, ISO9001, MILSPEC, etc) that would support our practices? We have provided the following as justification for customer B but so far they aren't happy with it:
1. Customer A has given us the okay to continue doing so, since they are only concerned with the final assembly
2. We review every bit of data from the Nonconformance Report from our Supplier to ensure that we can make alterations without resulting in other non-conforming components
We are hoping there is a clause in one of the standards to support our case. If not, are there other safeguards we should be taking if we are to continue doing this? I understand that in manufacturing if someone were to use a nonconforming screw it would be an issue, which is why this is a tough situation for me to resolve.
Thanks!
The situation:
We produce a part X for customer A, who then uses that part as a component in their product for customer B. Due to the nature of the products and the industry (military and government related), we are heavily audited by customer B even though there is no direct contract with them.
Customer A has provided us a drawing for Part X which we must produce to. However, Part X consists of multiple components, and we own the drawings for those components. One of these components, say Component 1, is brazed and welded and it is very difficult for our supplier to meet the tolerances in our drawing, since they are machined tolerances. Fabrication of Component 1 is expensive and currently the bottleneck for our operation, so we try to minimize the number of rejects for that component. Instead, the other components can be altered so that they still meet their individual component drawing requirements, and result in a final assembly that meets customer A's drawing requirements. The only issue is Component 1 won't be within spec according to the drawing. The supplier for Component 1 sends us a NCR and we issue a waiver to accept as is. This happens on about 50% of units. Customer A is aware of the issue and has told us that since they only care about the final product conforming to their drawing, what we are doing is not an issue.
Today Customer B performed an audit and expressed major concern with what we have been doing, which is totally understandable. Ideally, our supplier for Component 1 would be giving us a conforming product every time and we would not have to do alterations. Is there anything in the standards (AS9100, ISO9001, MILSPEC, etc) that would support our practices? We have provided the following as justification for customer B but so far they aren't happy with it:
1. Customer A has given us the okay to continue doing so, since they are only concerned with the final assembly
2. We review every bit of data from the Nonconformance Report from our Supplier to ensure that we can make alterations without resulting in other non-conforming components
We are hoping there is a clause in one of the standards to support our case. If not, are there other safeguards we should be taking if we are to continue doing this? I understand that in manufacturing if someone were to use a nonconforming screw it would be an issue, which is why this is a tough situation for me to resolve.
Thanks!