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I Annihilate The Forest (8.3)

Discussion in 'IATF 16949:2016 - Automotive Quality Systems' started by Mark H, May 8, 2018.

  1. Mark H

    Mark H Member

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    hey guys!

    I work for a company that remanufactures high voltage battery packs for electric cars. No design and development is done on these production lines.

    We got our ISO 9001:2015 certification last year, and we are working on implementing IATF 16949.

    IATF is required by some of our customers, and possible future customers. so we HAVE to get this certification.

    Outside of remanufacturing we do a lot of design and development. We repurpose the lower capacity batteries for customers that don't require IATF. We are working on a prototype that won't be for automotive at all.

    My question is: can we exclude design and development from our quality system?

    We are a start up company with shallow pockets, and our overhead has already gone way up because of ISO.

    I feel like IATF is designed for large companies who can afford dedicated specialized staff to be in compliance, not a start up company like us. Our Quality department is 3 people. Me, and Internal Auditor, and a document control specialist.

    Since certification is by address, could we be IATF certified in 1 building where we do remanufacturing of battery packs, and a 2nd building where we do R&D for non-automotive products that is not IATF certified?

    Implementing IATF in parts of our company that has nothing to do with automotive seems like killing trees, and wasting money for zero benefit. Our engineers think IATF is a complete joke for this reason.

    Thanks!
     
  2. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    Mark:

    Great questions, but let's deal with the last comment first: How much paperwork is created is YOUR call, not IATF 16949s. Plus, if you are a start-up and have plans to grow, as you add heads and things get complicated, you will WISH you had written more stuff down, trust me... If your overhead is "way up because of ISO", then a) you may not be doing things smart or b) you didn't have the required resources in place in the first place and were cutting corners which may come back to bite. You didn't say why you came up with needing 3 people or how many, but on face value, you've possibly made things more complex than needed.

    If you cannot change the spec of the product you make, then you are NOT design responsible, i.e the customer owns the battery spec. However, as you know you DO have to meet the process design requirements. "R & D" is NOT design and cannot be included.
     
  3. Mark H

    Mark H Member

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    Hmm, interesting. I want as little paperwork as possible. Every time I see "Shall document" in the standard, I see a piece of paper being filled out.

    I am really trying to wrap my head around it.

    I have heard that every hard copy of something needs a digital copy. Is that true? is it true the other way around? If it is, I can't see how I can implement IATF without adding piles of paperwork.

    I have talked about it with our director of engineering, and he thinks he can fulfill many of the requirements with our website and database.

    I am new to the quality world, and have no experience with IATF, and I greatly appreciate the insight.

    Oh and the reason why overhead has gone up is that we are paying 3 full time employees to work on quality (myself included) which costs a lot of money, and we make the people who are actually making the company money jump through hoops filling out checklists, and forms which takes away from production. It will pay off in the end when we can get more customers, and bid more aggressively for contracts, but right now it is costing us a lot of money without a noticeable benefit.
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2018
  4. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    Many thanks for the insights! For much of the IATF requirements, they are not separate documents which are needed (certainly not paper copies if you think that) and actually many of the stated requirements are naturally combined in one process description document. That alone should give a lot of relief. So, no hard copies, if you want (and can go) digital. It sounds to me that you could do with saving money, by spending money with a helpful consultant who fully understands this stuff. PM me with where you are located, I know many worthy sources of practical, hands on, face to face help.

    On the staff front, may I ask why you don't do audits and why you have a document controller? Do you really have, even as a start up, THAT many documents to control? Hard to conceive that it's a full time assignment in my mind. Same thing for the internal auditor. How many audits are you doing?
     
  5. Golfman25

    Golfman25 Well-Known Member

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    For IATF, you will limit your scope only to your automotive applicable products. So in your case it sounds like it would be remanufacturing battery packs. Some things may cross over and be applicable to the entire company. Other things will only be applicable to the specific manufacturing product lines.

    As for paper work, you'll need to document the required processes indicated in the standard. That's not all that difficult. And use electronic or PDF copies to limit the paper hard copies floating around. As for your manufacturing records, try to keep it simple as possible. You'll find if you keep it to as much as necessary, but as little as possible there isn't a lot of excess paperwork. Good luck.
     
    John C. Abnet likes this.
  6. Mark H

    Mark H Member

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    Hey guys!

    I think i'm getting this figured out.

    These certifications are by the address. having ISO in 2 buildings, and IATF in 1 building is possible, but it would have to be 2 separate quality management systems with 2 separate quality manuals, procedures, etc. It would actually be a lot more work than just having everything IATF certified. Everything should be under 1 quality management system (IATF).

    The simple & easy way is to be IATF certified company wide.

    Today I deployed an Engineering Change Request (ECR) that is to be used by department managers for changes to their production line that require engineering. This will be our process to document, and approve changes.

    There is also a ECR log that I made on Excel that will need to be kept by the Director of Engineering.

    I think this is all we need for internal engineering projects, which is great news. Super easy!

    We do have a product that we are developing to sell. There are many more requirements to follow for ISO/IATF 8.3 (Design and development). But, these requirements don’t apply to stuff that is for internal use.

    For this product we are planning to sell, we will need to document planning, specifications, changes, approvals, control CAD drawings similar to the way we control documents, archiving old drawings, DFMEA’s, Control Plans, etc. This will hopefully all be done by SOLIDWORDS PDM.

    From what I understand:

    Internal products (testing equipment) not being sold and only used by us: excluded from 8.3 requirements.

    Anything that we design and develop to be sold on the market as a product: must meet 8.3 requirements.

    What do you guys think? Am I understanding this correctly?

    Also, Are you guys familiar with Solidworks PDM?

    I talked to Smithers Quality Assessments today (That is who we are planning on using for our IATF certification), and they are familiar with it.

    Thanks guys! I really appreciate all the input I've been getting. It helps me out tremendously.
     
    Andy Nichols likes this.
  7. Mark H

    Mark H Member

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