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Question about relation between measure department and customer

darius
Hello Guys
I'm curious how it looks cooperation between measure department and customer
At the moment I working in production company (prototype plastic and die casting mold), mostly automotive and electric branche.
Measure departement is cut off from directly contact with customer. If any question appear, about drawing or what to measure, then I need to contact with our project manager.
The biggest problem is when I have drawings with errors. Then directly contact with customer will be great. Many times drawings are ok but there is thousands of dimensions and no information what to measure.
What then? How you guys solving this problem? How is looking, or how in perfect world should looks cooperation between measure departement with customer?

  • I almost never contact a customer directly.

    Depending on the status of the parts, it will either be a Program manager, the early parts QE, or the production QE.
  • yeah, i think unfortunately this is more common than we'd like.

    customers tend to want a single point of contact for everything.

    my preference is going to the customer directly but i don't have that luxury, all of my stuff has to go through the QAE for the program.
  • It may be convenient to have that direct contact with the customer, but more often then not it's best to have that single point of contact making calls about the project.

    You don't want the customer saying you'd do XYZ when that isn't the case... but if you have open communication between you and the customer, project management wont know what's up.

    Project Management is meant to work for both you and the customer. They're there to make sure the customer gets everything they need and you have the best information available. If you're having issues with information from a customer, sit down with the PM and outline everything you need to properly do your job and they should get it for you.
  • I rarely contact the customer directly. If I have a discrepancy on a print, those communications are ran through the Project Manager. There are positives and negatives with this. Positive: The PM has built a relationship with the customer and knows how to say what you want them to hear, this protects you. Negative: Doesn't usually happen as soon as you would like. However there are a few customers with whom me and their CMM programmer have created a relationship and build the program to both our likings or are able to hash things out.
  • I have had direct contact with some customers or I involved the estimator who then put me in direct contact. The biggest problem is that the usual point of contact with a customer is a buyer. They don't know prints and it takes many layers to get to the engineer that can actually answer something.
  • It's difficult to get a drawing change here where I see the b*a*s*t*a*r*d who drew it everyday at lunch, I can only imagine it being 10Xs harder from a 3rd party. Plus your company already agreed on making the part and claimed to be able to 'make' it, pride might be the culprit here or a signed agreement, usually 1 person or group at a company handles this, it might hurt them to admit a wrong or mistake.
  • here we're usually a subcontractor so getting a drawing change requires 1) we submit a request to our customer 2) they decide if it needs to be changed then 3) they have to go through the print change request process with their customer (who has a terminal case of "not thought of here" desease") so we end up having a lot of red-lined prints from our customer's engineering dept. to "get by for now" (read indefinitely)

    the fun part for us is our 3 biggest customers are supplying the same end user. we make the same parts for each of them so the end customer gets the parts from 3 vendors who all get their parts from us.
  • in reply to mckenzie
    I love that.How about this scenario.... Part is out out of print by .005, will that work in your assembly ? This is probably the tol / variation we can hold long term. OK please send them and we will do trial fit. THE PARTS FIT AWESOME !!!!! Please send as many as you can as fast as you can for the next 10 years.. Great to hear ! Can we change the print to the larger TOL. now that we know the parts will function / assemble and will be acceptable long term..... Ahhh, no. We need to hold the existing print TOL. Thanks though...1 week later... By the way why are the parts held up in quality with out of print conditions ???
  • in reply to mckenzie
    Nice one @Schlag!!! Sometimes the prints don't get changed because it costs a bunch of money, by the time all the top payed engineers are done looking at it. Other times you have to re-submit a First Article (for the entire assembly, even whole bird/car or whatever you're making) which is another ton and a half of money.
  • in reply to mckenzie
    exactly , we have a sub-assembly that by itself is quite flexible, its two identicle plates (14"x4"x.25") connected by a 15" shaft attached to a corner of the plates, just picking it up causes the concentricity of a bore at the end of the plate away from the shaft to move OOT, but when it is installed in the final assembly it assumes the alignment of the things its bolted too. i have about 50 of the sub-assemblies sitting in my inspection room on hold by the customer because they wont accept the sub-assemblies because the concentricity is out .1mm across a 15" span when they inspect it after they receive it from us. as far as we can determine the fit-up of the final assembly is fine. these things have been sitting here going on a year now
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