In house fabrication

Hey guys!

We have an in house fabrication shop at our company.

They build stuff for us like tables, bollards, awnings, racks for tools, jigs, special tools, etc (random stuff for our buildings and production lines).

I have having trouble figuring out what all is required for them regarding IATF.

They don't build any products that we sell, They just build stuff for internal use.

I don't think they fall under 8.3

They currently don't have any documents. They don't use any CAD software, they just build stuff.

I think they should probably have some kind of request form and log (like ECR, and ECR log).

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

They would be happy not to fall under any of standards. Classic.
There are certain reasons why they are there. Without them your organization would not achieve strategical targets.
They do not affect them directly, but their good performance would significantly help.
Some of presented examples are clearly outputs of APQP.
Not prime liners, but definitely they are somewhere later in that list.

 

Sounds like the only area they could possibly come into play is during process design. Assuming you have some engineering types design tools, work cells and such, they would probably be adjunct to that. Other than that, I would keep them out of IATF as much as possible. Good luck.

 

I just thought of something that might really complicate things big time.

A lot of work for a product we are developing is done by our Fabrication shop.

I have a thread about implementing 8.3 for that product.

http://www.qualityforumonline.com/forum/index.php?threads/i-annihilate-the-forest-8-3.1878/

Our fabrication shop builds the main structure of it. Cutting, welding, etc.

Right now the fabrication shop isn’t in our QMS at all.

 

Our fabrication shop builds a metal frame, we then add batteries taken from electric cars, and electronics for backup energy storage.

They cut, and weld it together.

The Fabrication shop's input would be raw steel, with their output being metal frames.

We have built 2 prototypes. One of them is in California being shown to investors, and the other one is here at our main facility being used to store energy from our solar panels, and charge electric cars.

Our potential customers would be airports, hospitals, truck stops, etc.

Our product we are developing will require UL certification for us to sell it, but not IATF.

We don't have any customers for it yet.

We have 3 customers for our re-manufacturing service that require IATF (re-manufacturing battery packs for electric cars).

If the product that we are developing goes into production, it would make sense for our fabrication shop to be in the same building since it would be part of the production process.

If we move our fabrication shop into the same building, that would free up space in our other building for our customer that requires IATF. In that scenario, we would have a building where nothing would require IATF (R&D, new product development, and fabrication shop), and another building were almost all of our customers require IATF.

I think it would make sense to only certify the building that needs it.

Less cost of certification, and give our engineers more freedom to develop this product without worrying about complying to IATF (or ISO).

Our engineers think IATF would be a hindrance, slow down our development, and make cost go up.

I understand implementing IATF for the customers who require it, We have to. but I see no benefit to having IATF in a building if nobody is requiring us to do so.

Can we have 1 building IATF certified, and exclude our other building from our QMS entirely?

 

Frankly, since everything is new I would start with ISO first. Once you have that down for a while and become more and more familiar with the requirements, then you can apply IATF where applicable. Most auto related companies will let you proceed with ISO as a minimum threshold.

 

We are already certified to ISO9001:2015.

They are re-manufactured battery packs, but they are not for aftermarket.

They are bought by OEM's, and given OEM part numbers to go in vehicles at dealerships under warranty.

These are the customers who require IATF.

On our certificate for ISO9001:2015, it lists 2 addresses.

At the time we got certified we had 3 buildings, one of them was excluded because all it was for was storage. We didn't do any Design and Development at that time, so 8.3 (Design and Development) was excluded from the scope of our QMS.

Now we have 4 buildings here in the US, and 1 in Europe. We are also now developing that new product which is not for automotive.

It's my understanding that our location in Europe can't be ISO or IATF certified unless it gets audited as well, so my logic is that if we don't have a building audited, and it's not in our scope, it's excluded.

I am wanting to exclude another building (R&D, the Fabrication shop, and Design of this new product), and only include the buildings for customers who require IATF.

(so we would have 5 buildings in 2 countries, with only 2 buildings included in our QMS)

I don't think I can exclude 8.3 from the scope unless we exclude the building completely (Since we are in fact designing and developing something).

Sorry I am having a hard time explaining the situation completely because I want to avoid naming our customers, giving out our company name, and giving too many details about the product we are developing.

We can include 8.3 in the scope of our QMS, but I think it would be really difficult to manage our CAD files, revisions, approvals, DFMEA's, etc without having $10,000 worth of SOLDWORKS PDM software, and licenses to keep track of it all.

I don't know if you guys work with any engineers, but trying to get them to fill out paperwork is like trying to herd cats.

Thanks for all the input, I need to get this figured out so I know how to move forward. This is what I see as my options:

Option 1: Include 8.3, get expensive software, include 3 buildings in our QMS.

Option 2: Exclude 8.3, move everything that doesn't require ISO or IATF into the same building, and only include 2 buildings in our QMS.

I obviously like option 1 better, I believe that it's easier, and better for our company. but is it really? Is it even possible?

Thanks guys!

 

I would speak with your registrar. There are several different options with multiple facilities. I would focus less on location and more on the processes. If you design for the auto industry, you may not want to exclude it -- what would your customers say?

And if you're looking at adding paperwork to "fill out" you're probably running down the wrong track. Take a look at your design process and see what gaps you may have. I doubt there are a lot.

 

Yeah, I'll talk to our registrar today.

Our design isn't for the auto industry.

IF we end up selling this product, our customers would be airports, hospitals, truck stops, etc. They wouldn't care about IATF. They would care about UL certification.

We have been working hard to get it UL certified, but having to comply with IATF makes it even more complicated.

If we get SOLIDWORKS PDM, we won't have to fill out paperwork, but that is very expensive.

 

UPDATE:

I talked to the big wigs at work into spending the money on that Solidworks PDM software.

We now plan on including 8.3 in our scope, and having IATF at all of our US locations.

Apparently they like that idea better than moving our fabrication shop, and dedicating an entire facility to only 3 departments. That would have been a huge pain, and would have requiring a lot of electrical work to accommodate their equipment.

I am very happy with the decision.

I talked to our registrar as well, They are familiar with Solidworks PDM.

Do any of you guys have experience with that software? I think it will really help our engineers keep track of all their files, as well as meet most of the requirements of 8.3.

Right now we have thousands of CAD files that are passed around with flash drives. No control. it's pretty ridiculous. That's why 8.3 scared me so much. lol.