posted 17 March 2000 12:47 AM              

We are a regional office located in Singapore and we are part of a corporate company that designs and manufactures semiconductor equipment (located in US).

Our regional office is currently undergoing changes with objective of obtaining QS 9000 certification.

Unfortunately, according to one auditing/certification body, we are not qualified because of our nature of business. However, an alternative body claimed that we can.

For our regional office, we provide the following services:

1) Installation and qualification of equipment at customer sites.
2) We provide preventive maintenance and service contracts to customers.
3) We sell and deliver spare parts to customers (we have our own warehouse in Singapore).
4) We provide technical training to both customers and internal engineers.
5) We provide technical expertise to our customers.

Can you advise, based on our nature of business in Singapore, are we qualified to go for QS 9000 certification, considering that we do not have design and manufacturing here in Singapore?

Can different auditing/certification bodies have different interpretation of the QS 9000 elements?

Appreciate if you could advise urgently !!

posted 17 March 2000 01:57 PM               

I would need more information to be absolutly sure but in general if your office/location performs the activities you mentioned above for an automotive customer your office/location can be QS-9000 certified.

A more likely scenario is that your office would be registered as a "remote site". In this scenario your site would part of a QS-9000 registration.

posted 23 March 2000 03:48 AM              

Thanks for the feedback. However, I got some information that RAB does not think we are qualified for QS 9000 because we do not have a design and manufacturing facility here in Singapore.

Can you or anyone please advise on this point???

posted 18 April 2000 02:50 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Marc Smith:
I dunno. One former client had their design office in the US and production facilities in Korea. They registered to QS9000. I have never heard of location of facilities to matter in a registration. I know a distributor in Dayton, Ohio is registered to QS9000 (a distributor doesn't make anything but rather is simply a 'middleman') - they certainly had no design function nor did they do any manufacturing.

After having seen a distributor registered I have a hard time understanding why you would not be elegible. But that's QS9000 and the RAB for you!

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We are currently "not a design responsible supplier" and just were recommended for certification to QS9000 by BSI.