4.3.1 Determining the scope of the quality management system - supplemental

Hi everyone. My first post on the forum

My organisations CB raised a NC in our recent surveillance audit against this clause (4.3.1).

As part of the audit the auditors reviewed audit reports from other locations that we support and found the following:

Objective Evidence;

'The remote support function does not show it provides any support for my fabrication site for customer service and sales.'

My initial instinct was to argue that this is not an issue with my site but the site we support but the auditors stated that this is an organisation wide issue that needs t be resolved at a corporate level.

Were the auditors right to raise this NCR or do I have apoint?

Thanks

 

First of all, welcome to the site! I don't know a lot about what your company does but it sounds like it's possible that an exclusion could be listed in your QMS? For example, we are not responsible for product design and we listed that in our Quality Manual. If it's not a process that can be excluded, you will have to find a way to document it in your Quality Manual.

 

Good day @Anthony Purdie ;
Is it possible for you to state the actual scope of your QMS here for us? That information would help us help you.

Be well.

 

Hi John,

My site supports various sites with various functions. In this case it we provide Sales, customer support and manufacturing. We have included this other site as part of our QMS scope and provided details to our CB. This has not been carried out by our other site however and they did not include us in their scope.

My argument is that the NC should really be raised by the other sites CB against that site and that it is not our responsibility to ensure that they include all support sites in their scope but the auditor seen this differently and asked us to correct the issue. Perhaps from a corporate QA level.

Thanks

Anthony

 

Hi Andy,

We have been IATF certified since 2018 and TS before that dating back to 2009.

I have tried to give some more information in my reply to John above. This issue does date back to our first IATF audit where the issue was present even then (I checked).It was not noticed by the auditor at the time however. The support site has now updated their scope to include my site so in terms of immediate correction, this action is complete. I am still unsure whether we should been issued an NC however.

 

My response as copied from the "other" site...

So, hopefully I understand (it may be easier for us if you refer to the various entities as "location A", "location B", etc... There are a lot of references to "we"..."other site"..."us"...."my site" etc...). Very confusing.

At the risk of getting caught up in semantics, "Site" is by definition an entity that provides the value added work.

If I understand correctly, ...
1- "Your" site does manufacturing (and other activities). We'll refer to that as location "A".
2- Location "A" holds an IATF 16949 certification as part of a corporate scheme that also includes site "B"
3- Within the scope of the QMS at location "A", it states that location "A" receives support from location "B" for Customer Service and Sales.
4- As part of an audit of site "A", your CB auditor wrote site "A" up with a non-conformance, because location "B" does not identify in the site "B" QMS scope, that location "B" provides "Customer Service and Sales" support to site "A".


If my understanding above is accurate AND the auditor's review of site "B" showed that site "B" does indeed provide and control the Customer Service and Sales support as defined on site "A"'s scope, then I see no reason for a nonconformity (i.e. IATF does not have a requirement specific to this scenario).

Is my understanding/are my scenarios accurate to your situation ?

Be well.

 

Hi John,

You are correct in your interpretation. Apologies for my confusing terminology. I may edit the top post to make things clearer.

Thank you for your input this far