Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. – Pete Seeger
Many times, in business, clients will provide a request for quotation (RFQ) with terms and conditions (Ts & Cs) and/or additional requirements including quality and product requirements. These requirements might be attached directly to the RFQ, referenced on the RFQ, or found on a website where they can be easily accessed and updated. Ts & Cs and requirements stipulate the expectations placed on you as a supplier by your customer. Although admittedly these contract documents are a bit of a snore, keep in mind they are legally and contractually binding to you. As a result, it is important that your management system has a robust process to ensure that you not only know about the Ts & Cs and any additional requirements, but also that you confirm your organization has the ability to satisfy these requirements prior to the acceptance of the order and before the release of your products and/or services to your customer.
Nonconformances are on the Rise
More and more as a certification body we are seeing issues with management systems that do not have a robust and effective process for the review of customer requirements resulting in an increase in certification nonconformities in this area. When management systems derail in the contract review process, nonconformances can be sprinkled throughout the entire management system resulting in incomplete risk analyses, incorrect supplier selection, incomplete flow-down of customer requirements to suppliers, data control issues, missed production operations, and poor customer communication. The list of issues it can cause goes on and on. It really can end up a Pandora's box. We are always looking for solid processes to ensure that you system consistently meets your customer’s requirements.
Process Improvements
If you have improved your requirements review process, but you have older long-term agreements that were reviewed the old way, repeating the review process on these older agreements and their stated requirements may give you valuable information that you could have missed during previous reviews. Improving the process and ensuring that all existing contracts are re-reviewed will not only protect your organization ultimately avoid future customer issues.
Customers Expect Conformance
For the Aviation, Space and Defense (ASD) industry, a new standard (AS9018) is being developed to help certification bodies like Platinum respond to major nonconformities identified by customers, including failures to flow-down and follow terms and conditions and quality/product requirements in contracts. We are already experiencing ASD customers using this approach and have addressed the ability to follow-up on customer complaints in our revised Certification Requirements document. So far, we’ve seen this used on…you guessed it…customer flow-down requirements.
Walking through your management system with an eagle’s eye and truly understanding, evaluating, and adhering to your current and potential customer requirements can be the difference between a system that really works and one that doesn’t throughout all the management system processes in your organization. It is the difference between making your customers happy and giving you repeat business and not. Focus your next internal audit on this process keeping in mind the impact of this process on both your organization and the end customer will help you ensure that your system is truly working as intended and is meeting your customers’ expectations.
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