Seeking Opinions: Using a Separate Quality Requirements Document (QRD) for Detail Drawings

[Michael_Michael_Motorcycle]

I'm currently working on engineering drawings for a series of parts. We have about 50 parts that all share the same quality requirements related to cleaning, inspection, packaging, and documentation. This means if any of those requirements change, we have to update 50 drawings which is way more work than IO feel it should be. To streamline our documentation process and ensure consistency, I'm considering creating a separate Quality Requirements Document (QRD) and referencing it in each of the drawings. The QRD would then contain all of the relevant details about cleaning, inspection, packaging, and documentation.

Example General Note in the Drawings (see Note 5)

GENERAL NOTES:
1. ALL DIMENSIONS ARE IN MILLIMETERS UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
2. TOLERANCES UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED:
LINEAR DIMENSIONS: ±0.1mm
ANGULAR DIMENSIONS: ±0.5°
3. SURFACE FINISH: 1.6 µm Ra MAX UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
4. MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL 316L UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
5. QUALITY REQUIREMENTS PER DOCUMENT QRD-001 (LATEST REVISION). SEE QRD-001 FOR CLEANING, INSPECTION, PACKAGING, AND DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS.

Perceived Pros:
Consistency: Ensures uniform quality standards across all parts.
Clarity: Reduces clutter in engineering drawings, making them easier to read.
Efficiency: Simplifies updates to quality requirements; only the QRD needs updating instead of multiple drawings.

Perceived Cons:
Accessibility: Engineers and inspectors must reference an additional document.
Complexity: Potential for miscommunication if the QRD is not properly managed or if revisions are not clearly communicated.
Documentation Control: Requires robust document control practices to ensure everyone is using the latest version of the QRD.

Questions for the Community
Have any of you implemented a similar approach in your work? How has it worked out?
What challenges did you face, and how did you address them?
Do you see any potential pitfalls I might have overlooked?
Any best practices for maintaining and communicating updates to the QRD?

Looking forward to your insights and experiences. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[3DDave]

Many companies do this. It decreases the overlooking of requirements. It means that workflows based on those requirements can be cut->paste. When I did so it included the parallel manufacturing instructions.

If I said use cleaning process XYZ I could look at that process and know what chemicals and so forth would be used. The alternative is to specify all sorts of detailed cautions, like "Don't use aromatic solvents" to clean polycarbonate, which isn't something that is inspectable after the fact. Instead it would be "Part shall be free of microcrazing and infiltration of aromatic solvents." Which is great as it will require a sample to be taken and sent to a mass spectrometer and using an electron microscope as opposed to "Clean per process XYZ" where the matching XYZ process has the compatible materials listed.

The tricky bit is that if that collection document changes there may be many QA/QC workflows that also need to change, but usually this is because of things like in the cleaning case where some cleaning agent is no longer available and a new one has been found that is suitable. It doesn't affect any previously made parts.

As to the cons - engineers already have to refer to a lot of documents; this means they don't also have to copy->paste the entire contents onto the drawing. It takes almost no time to become familiar with a single spec for cleaning or for installing fasteners or whatever comes up regularly and is much better than the free-for-all that can happen without such documents. I don't want 50 different callouts for installing locking compound when the end result is effectively the same.

If I had my way, such things would be on a company wiki system with change authorization limited to a small responsible group. It has the instant advantage that any drawing that is also in the wiki can be automatically linked to that page allowing a direct where-used view.

Other than that, they are managed like any other contractual item. They are less likely to change than most documents, though their number will increase over time. Instead of reviewing 100s of documents to see how some problem was handled there will be only one document to review.

The main issue that can be a bother is when they are nested or cross linked. Avoiding that will cause less trouble. I really hated MIL SPECs where an item spec would call out 10 other specifications that in turn called out more specifications. The amount of material didn't really change, all the info had to be available one way or the other, but the never knowing if there was an end to the search was frustrating.

 

[Michael_Michael_Motorcycle]

Thanks for the detailed reply!

When offloading quality requirements to a separate document from the drawing, does that typically include inspection plans as well (ie inspect critical dimensions with AQL = 4.0)? I ask because inspection plans are unique from part to part, so it complicates things a little more. I was thinking the drawing would point to a "QRD" which contains a table something like what I have attached below.


+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| Part # | Dimensional | Visual |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| PN-0001 | Inspect critical dimensions 1-4 | Perform 100% visual inspection |
| | (C=0 sampling plan, AQL = 2.5) | per II-007 |
| | Inspect critical dimension 5 on first and | |
| | last unit of lot | |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| PN-0002 | Inspect all critical dimensions | Perform 100% visual inspection |
| | (C=0 sampling plan, AQL = 2.5) | per II-007 |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| PN-0003 | Inspect critical dimension 5 on first and | Perform 100% visual inspection |
| | last unit of lot | per II-007 |
| | Inspect remaining critical dimensions with | |
| | C=0 sampling plan, AQL = 2.5 | |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| PN-0004 | Inspect all critical dimensions | Perform 100% visual inspection |
| | (C=0 sampling plan, AQL = 2.5) | per II-007 |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| PN-0005 | Inspect all critical dimensions | Perform 100% visual inspection |
| | (C=0 sampling plan, AQL = 2.5) | per II-007 |
+---------+-----------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

 

[Michael_Michael_Motorcycle]

Looks like my ASCII table formatting got mangled. I've attached a screenshot instead.

 

[ctopher]

GENERAL NOTES:
1. ALL DIMENSIONS ARE IN MILLIMETERS UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
2. TOLERANCES UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED:
LINEAR DIMENSIONS: ±0.1mm
ANGULAR DIMENSIONS: ±0.5°
3. SURFACE FINISH: 1.6 µm Ra MAX UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
4. MATERIAL: STAINLESS STEEL 316L UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED.
5. QUALITY REQUIREMENTS PER DOCUMENT QRD-001 (LATEST REVISION). SEE QRD-001 FOR CLEANING, INSPECTION, PACKAGING, AND DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS.

Notes 1, 2, 3 can be part of the drawing format templates. Will give you more room on drawing field and for other notes.
Note 4 is a note, because it can vary.
Note 5 is fine, but document may need to travel with drawing to vendor. Some companies will not let go their quality procedures.
Other processes can be part of a traveler or similar. Every company is different.

Chris, CSWP
SolidWorks
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