posted 22 June 2000 11:03 AM               

As a small finishing company whoose suppliers are big chemical concerns 4.6.2.1 could be problamatical (using qs 9000 as the fundemental development tool bit). I did not have the resources (or desire) to start assessing to QS-9000. I took the view that improvements are more likely to be self-sustaining if identified in house and so designed a self-assessment questionnaire based around QS-9000. (Basically just turned the requirements into statements)and asked our suppliers to identify if they 'met' or 'partially met' the statement or if a 'significant gap' existed .The latter two would be an 'opportunity for improvement'which they could document and forward for me to provide evidence of supplier development based around QS-9000.
Our assessor is unpreterbed at the lack of approved supplier lists and second party audits.

Are we developing our suppliers? Probably not. Supplier development requires more than a few lines in a quality system. If I had a customer come here and tell me he was going to develop me because his quality system required it I'd tell him to 'go away'.