Posts: 14
From:Schiller Park, IL
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 28 February 2001 09:47 AM               

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We are a Metal Stamping facility down the supplier chain (2-3 levels)that have been reqistered to QS-9000 for a year now. Our Internal Audit System was performed and it was found that we have a difference of opinion on the phrase "length of time that the part (or family of parts) is active for production and service requirements plus one calendar year."

In our procedures we shorten this requirement to "Life of the Part + Service + One Year." During the audit participants were saying that the requirement is 'Life of the Tool + 1 Year." The practice is that the records are kept for as long as we have the job (tooling) and once it is stopped by the customer (tool is returned or scrapped)then we take the records out of our active retention system to our inactive retention for one year.

We have our follow up coming up in a week and we will get our registrar's perspective then, but thought I would get the forum participants view. Does our practice meet the QS requirement?

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Posts: 137
From:Sussex, WI
Registered: Feb 2001

posted 28 February 2001 10:41 AM               

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I think what you're doing now is just fine. The "life of the part" is the "life" in your plant that the job is active. Once the activity ceases, you keep the records for one year, then get rid of them. The approach you describe (until the tooling is pulled or scapped + one year) sounds fine.

I worked with a heat treater where customer tooling wasn't involved. We set the system up to review all PPAP jobs annually to make sure there was activity in the previous year. If there was no activity in the last twelve months, the PPAP records are placed in an inactive file (the customer is notified by letter). At the next annual review the inactive file is purged. Passed the audit with no problems.

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