Suppliers Starting to Charge A Fee for Customer Audits
- Thread starter GStough
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Mikey324
Quite Involved in Discussions
Well, all my suppliers are in the Great Lakes area. I see no reason to go there
Randy
Super Moderator
AMEN!!!!!!
Except for San Diego where I can visit my old Drill Instructor from the Marines after I finish my assignments.
I am required by procedure to audit the whole QMS. Of course I do so with our product's interest foremost, but there it is. I do find that I see things their 3rd party auditors don't.
I ask questions like "If this caliper used for receipt inspections (one of three at the desk) is found to be out of tolerance when calibrated and you don't write down which caliper you used for these inspections, how would you be able to check back to see what product's results might have been affected?" and I receive faraway looks while they process this question. They clearly had not thought of that, and their CB didn't either.
The idea that I am jumping on a plane in these days and times (air travel is getting more onerous) to justify my place in the organization is a very good joke.
Points, yes but not so very many of them - certainly not like my CB days. Airlines and hotels have raised the bar so high that I know no SQEs that travel enough to reach any elite status level.In fairness to Sidney, he said "some" SQE's. not all, not you. I agree with him, I am positive some audits I've suffered were by SQE's doing just that - trying to stay/look busy.I am required by procedure to audit the whole QMS. Of course I do so with our product's interest foremost, but there it is. I do find that I see things their 3rd party auditors don't.
I ask questions like "If this caliper used for receipt inspections (one of three at the desk) is found to be out of tolerance when calibrated and you don't write down which caliper you used for these inspections, how would you be able to check back to see what product's results might have been affected?" and I receive faraway looks while they process this question. They clearly had not thought of that, and their CB didn't either.
The idea that I am jumping on a plane in these days and times (air travel is getting more onerous) to justify my place in the organization is a very good joke.
SQE's that know I have an AS9100 cert and have had one for over a decade from a well respected registrar who ask me stupid questions like "do you have a document control process" and then want to write down the procedure number and do that kinda thing over and over are wasting my time and their own.
The caliper question example you gave is not a nonconformance to AS9100 just because they don't log which caliper they used.
Poor auditing abounds. Yes.
The idea that a standard doesn't specifically require a caliper number to be logged doesn't mean it isn't important. I don't have that standard. Does it require follow up of product when inspection equipment is found to be out of tolerance? Does it require processes to be effective? I am trying to get people to think past the black and white print. Better for me to find this than their own discovery if they actually need to do the follow up but can't for the lack of this simple step.
But in all fairness Jen isn’t performing a real AS9100 audit. As an SQE that is a great question. I wish my SQEs would have asked that type of real world quality engineering question…I always skied about how the organization handled corrective actions, FMEA, SPC, inspections, MSA etc. to ensure they were effective and not just checking the box to be compliant to some minimum standard…
Knowing that you know this very well, but for the record, no audit will ever cover the whole QMS. It will always be a sample; one might cover all of the clauses of a standard, but the actual audit will be a sample. Actually, depending on the size and complexity of the supplier’s operation, many sub processes will go untouched.
As discussed in this very forum many, many times, if I were a supplier in the receiving end of a customer audit, I would never let the SQE to have access to other customers data and IP. Any good second party audit should be planned taken into account the data driven by the performance indicators in that business relationship.
