Switch production from one machine to another

Hi all,

do we need to inform our customer if we switch our production from one machine to another in the same range? We have a group of 4 machines with the same specifications, but PPAP tryout and PPAP itself was confirmed only for one machine. I really need some standard behind this requirement / permission, not only examples from your practice (with all respect to you all!) If there is no general requirement, probably 'Ask you customer' will be the right answer?

Per 8.5.6.1 it depends on your customer. If they require notification of production changes you need to notify them. Now the question is whether changing machines is a “production change.” As I told my customer, if they want parts they need to be reasonable otherwise we’ll be processing paperwork every week. In our case we a a tooling dominate so the machine has little effect. Your situation may be different.

You may not be required to notify customer.; that would depend on whatever agreement you have with the customer. However, 8.5.6.1 section b, c, and d says you are still required to 'validate changes before implementation', 'document the evidence of related risk analysis', and most importantly 'retain records of the verification and validation'. Therefore, you had better have some evidence of validation, even if there is no requirement to notify the customer.

And honestly, it's probably a good idea. We just had a supplier switch machines, thought everything was the same, but turns out the fixture was different. They ended up eating a bunch of scrap.

If your customer is an OEM, my "guess" (based upon experience @OEM & Tier 1) is you will need to perform a run at rate and to a degree a mini PPAP or more, to confirm conformance of parts. And to be clear this may vary depending (as Golfman25 rightly points out) on customer, your SE, and part/assy complexity. There are many variables that the OEM/SQ must take into account when making this assessment...hope this helps.

optomist1

My automotive experience is dated, but we always PPAPed the tools, not the machines. We would PPAP an extrusion die that could run in any of six extruders, or PPAP a deep draw die set that could run in any press that was of the same or larger tonnage. It could not run in a smaller tonnage press than was PPAPed because there was a risk that a lower tonnage would be inadequate.

Miner said:

My automotive experience is dated, but we always PPAPed the tools, not the machines. We would PPAP an extrusion die that could run in any of six extruders, or PPAP a deep draw die set that could run in any press that was of the same or larger tonnage. It could not run in a smaller tonnage press than was PPAPed because there was a risk that a lower tonnage would be inadequate.

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That's "normal" thinking. Not much is "normal" these days. I think much of it is due to the brain drain of the past several years. The older generation seemed to know the production processes. The new generation, not so much.

What your PFMEA says about machine characteristics - product characteristics relation?
As Miner pointed out, if product characteristics are strictly defined by tool characteristics, then machine change does not require reporting.
Just record for traceability purpose what and where was made.
If relation machine - product exist or there is a risk defined, so you need to inform you customer , especially when CSR says so.

Golfman25 said:

That's "normal" thinking. Not much is "normal" these days. I think much of it is due to the brain drain of the past several years. The older generation seemed to know the production processes. The new generation, not so much.

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That has been goin on for decades (actually centuries). Of course ‘newbies’ know less than veterans. Although the newbies often proclaim that they are more knowledgeable than the old geezers. real knowledge comes from actual experience when done from a solid foundation of theory and practical knowledge. An article I used to make my engineers read upon coming to work for me or as a student in my Analytical Engineering Statistics courses was “How Engineers Lose Touch”. Of course many of them proclaimed that since the article was written in the early nineties it was no longer relevant to them.

All great posts and insights above, a bit more I recall an in plant line relocation, that ultimately was re-qualified...all same equipment moved 6 bays away...it varies to be sure

Thank you all.

So the most accurate answer is that if the customer explicitly require notification about process change (what machine change is), you need to notify them. If the customer do not have this requirement among his requirements, you do not need to, BUT(!) you need to somehow verify your produced parts on different machine to confirm, that the part is in specifications.