Responding to QA documents "Corrective Action"

[winpop123]

This question is for those of you that operate in a AS9001 Quality envirnonment or similar. I have a situation where I need to respond as to how to "prevent future occurences".

The situation simply is that we designed a new system. During the assembly of the first system by Production personel, some minor design issues were noted. These items were then written up on a corrective action report. The "preventative action to prevent future occurences" has me stumped. The real answer is human error on the design side. The QA types hate that. They also didn't like the suggestion of building a prototype first before they attempt to apply the QA rigors. We intergrate and build a variety of systems that are never exactly the same so I don't really know how to "eliminate future occurences", heck I'm suprised that things work at all with the schedules we work under....suggestions?

thanks

 

[drawoh]

ewh,

I said "might be".

Where I work, checking is mandatory, but there is no definition of it, or standards for it. It is a waste of time and resources. If a qualified checker carefully reviewed one quarter of our drawing packages, we would be faster, cheaper, and we would have better quality.

JHG

 

[michfan]

drawoh,
I think you could say that about most of the companies we all work for.

"Checking" is a dirty word where I work...mistakes are generally in the $1000's and not uncommon.

Easy to see the correlation, but my boss doesn't see it. That is when you either bang your head against the wall, drink heavily to block it all out, or just accept what you can't change. They don't pay me enough to afford the drink, and my head hurts all the time anyway, so I'm learning to just tune out and accept that this is their way of doing things, until I find something else.

 

[KENAT]

Trying to put a cost on it is difficult. Sure you can track all the ECOs done but not all of these are directly because of drawing check and weeding them out can be difficult. Also if you're lucky at least some of the items that get scrapped can be costed but this still leaves a lot of the costs unaccounted for. The time spent by purchasing re-ordering parts, the time lost in production due to part unavailability/unsuitability; time spent investigating failures by quality/manufacturing/design etc, all harder to quantify.

I believe strongly in checking but struggle to put a price tag on it. We've persuaded some people our dedicated checker is worth it but efforts to get a second so we can check more or less everything not just a proportion aren't going well. Our VP suggests we train someone internally, which is how most checkers are created, trouble is they need to have been working as drafters/designers/Engineers in an environment that was concerned about quality of work, adherence to standards etc which rules out anyone from this place!;-)

 

[drawoh]

michfan,

My mistakes usually are cheap, perhaps a couple of hundred dollars at the most. Most of the time, checking would not pay for itself. A couple of years ago, I prepared drawings for some mirrors that cost $10K+ each. I checked my own drawings very carefully, and it worked out okay. I would have appreciated a design checker. A design checker can easily justify their existence when $10K and three months of schedule time are at stake.

JHG