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Supplier Quality Question

cheesiechanman
So in addition to my CMM programming duties here at work I have been managing supplier quality for the last almost 2 years. I've never done supplier quality before so I don't have much experience or examples to reference.

What does your company do when there is non-conforming parts found during production from the supplier? Do they have specific bins or boxes to put bad parts? When are they collected? Who goes through them to determine if it was done in house or its a supplier defect that should be rejected back to them?

I have many suggestions but I'm always told that the operators wont do that or wont be able to keep up with running machines and tossing parts in bins......Neutral face
  • 5-WHYS seem to help me sometimes but an 8D goes over all elements to determine the root cause of the error or failure.
  • in reply to KatmandudaMeow
    Eight Disciplines Methodology is a method or model developed at Ford Motor Company used to approach and to resolve problems, typically employed by quality engineers or other professionals. Focused on product and process improvement, its purpose is to identify, correct, and eliminate recurring problems
  • So in addition to my CMM programming duties here at work I have been managing supplier quality for the last almost 2 years. I've never done supplier quality before so I don't have much experience or examples to reference.

    What does your company do when there is non-conforming parts found during production from the supplier? Do they have specific bins or boxes to put bad parts? When are they collected? Who goes through them to determine if it was done in house or its a supplier defect that should be rejected back to them?

    I have many suggestions but I'm always told that the operators wont do that or wont be able to keep up with running machines and tossing parts in bins......Neutral face

    At Kat stated above, 8D system. A team is formulated to determine the next steps. If I have a supplier issue, we have them correct the issue and give us their 8D to assure it doesn't happen again.
  • How we manage Supplier QC:

    1) PO is sent to vendor that calls out our requirements
    2) Parts sent to vendor once they accept the PO
    3) Parts are sent back to us upon completion & they immediately hit QC Dept
    4) QC Dept fills out an "Incoming Inspection Report". There is a box on this form that says "check here if there is a nonconformance listed on the report". If that box is checked, parts are immediately routed to me/upper mgmt for dispositioning. The action taken can vary between "Accept As Is" all the way down to "Return To Vendor under RMA"
    5) Good or bad, "Incoming Inspection Report" is shared with vendor after each shipment is complete to let them know what we're seeing
    6) Depending on severity of issue, we may issue a CAPA (corrective action/preventative action) against the vendor that shall be returned within 7-30 days
    7) On time delivery & rejections are part of the equation that gets tallied up & that is used to score them on the "Vendor Score Card" that we keep on file. Marks on that card have the ability to get them kicked off of our "Master Vendor List".

    All of the above being said...we're all in this to make money. We give our Suppliers the benefit of the doubt a lot of the times and end up learning something from them in the process. Only put the "boxing gloves on" if there is a major issue.
  • Thanks for the feedback y'all. I didn't phrase my question well enough, sorry. I have the defective product and return to supplier down.... I'm talking about things that have slipped through the cracks and weren't caught during our incoming inspection. My main issue is when operators find defective hardware on the line (for example. we have o ring gaskets that sometimes has flash on them that will not allow it to pass a leak test. approximately 5-10 a shift totaling up to around $2k a year.) they typically throw it away.

    On top of the supplier issues we have operators damaging product during assembly. The guy before me didn't have anything in place for operators to place defective hardware in to address issues with the supplier. Everything I have suggested has been shot down for a multitude of reasons. Not enough space at the machines, operators don't have time, how do we differentiate between supplier issue vs operator accidentally destroying the hardware, who goes through it, etc.

    I have tried to explain the importance of determining how much money we are throwing away but it doesn't seem to be important to anyone other than me. The way i see it is, if we find that we are throwing away $5k worth of a specific hardware in a year... we now have a budget of $5k for next year to improve upon our process to ensure it doesn't continue to happen. Easier said than done... but spending 15K on automation to reduce the frequency of operator caused destruction of product will pay for itself eventually.

    I hope that clears up my issue a bit.
  • Thanks for the feedback y'all. I didn't phrase my question well enough, sorry. I have the defective product and return to supplier down.... I'm talking about things that have slipped through the cracks and weren't caught during our incoming inspection. My main issue is when operators find defective hardware on the line (for example. we have o ring gaskets that sometimes has flash on them that will not allow it to pass a leak test. approximately 5-10 a shift totaling up to around $2k a year.) they typically throw it away.

    On top of the supplier issues we have operators damaging product during assembly. The guy before me didn't have anything in place for operators to place defective hardware in to address issues with the supplier. Everything I have suggested has been shot down for a multitude of reasons. Not enough space at the machines, operators don't have time, how do we differentiate between supplier issue vs operator accidentally destroying the hardware, who goes through it, etc.

    I have tried to explain the importance of determining how much money we are throwing away but it doesn't seem to be important to anyone other than me. The way i see it is, if we find that we are throwing away $5k worth of a specific hardware in a year... we now have a budget of $5k for next year to improve upon our process to ensure it doesn't continue to happen. Easier said than done... but spending 15K on automation to reduce the frequency of operator caused destruction of product will pay for itself eventually.

    I hope that clears up my issue a bit.

    Key words:
    Slipped through the cracks

    Time to apply some bondo to those cracks (shore up your incoming inspection)

    If you're inspecting to the proper criteria with the correct gages & properly trained personnel you'll cut down on this issue


  • Key words:
    Slipped through the cracks

    Time to apply some bondo to those cracks (shore up your incoming inspection)

    If you're inspecting to the proper criteria with the correct gages & properly trained personnel you'll cut down on this issue

    There isn't enough bondo to fill the cracks left by my predecessor. Disappointed

    Question though. How often would you say you all reject hardware back to a supplier? Basically, how well has your team kept them in check.

    Unfortunately with what I'm working with, in some cases, there are specified limits of fallout rate called out on the print or it was originally quoted by our customer. We get screws from a company that is allowed a 4% fallout.... we get anywhere from 3-5 million a year. So they are allowed to send us 120,000-200,000 screws that don't have ANY threads. There isn't anything that I can do about it. As far as I know... but I've tried.

    Also, my predecessor was a pushover so our company has been labeled as such. For example we get shipments in from a company that is damaged every time. The bottom boxes are crushed due to the weight of the stacked parts. I addressed the problem and told them I needed it fixed by either adding supports to the boxes or stacking them 1 layer less. They basically said "This has been a problem for a long time and rather than implement simple solutions here is the quote of $100k to have our engineers look at it, redesign packaging and the additional cost of this ridiculous packaging." See photo below. So needless to say.... nothing has been done. My boss wont allow me to reject them back because we need them for production. So I'm not just up the creek without a paddle.... I don't even have a boat to float in.



    By the way these are wires, that plug in to a board, to turn on the LED's on your vegetable drawer in your fridge. ​They are normally packaged a few hundred in a 14"x12"x10" box.
  • So if we find something wrong during the incoming goods inspection and our construction department cannot issue a special release, we usually send the parts back or scrap them. Depending on what our supplier wants.
    Sure, sometimes a few bad parts slip through. If the assembly then has problems assembling the parts, they then write a quality report and we then deal with the supplier.​
  • in reply to cheesiechanman
    sounds like cost to quality issue. Do you prefer quantity over quality? if so youll have more defects.. some stuff takes time, so maybe present a cost break down of the bad parts for your product? sounds like youve already tried this though... you seems to be going about it correctly by the end of your paragraph tho! good job!
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