🚀 go-pugleaf

List Members:

I would like to present my company's current QS9000 dilemma in the hopes
some of you may have experienced this dilemma and have sought reasonable
answers.  Let me explain...

....my company is a small Tier one supplier to many automobile
manufacturers.  Last year, we received our initial QS-9000 certification.
As many of you are probably familiar, the systems that are built to pass
that first audit are not the most sound or efficient systems a company can
have.  As such, a lot of tweaking occurrs after the auditors leave.  This
leads me to my company's dilemma:  our company issues steel rulers to each
employee to assist them in determining whether or not their production
output meets standards listed in control plans or operational guides.
Under chapter 4.11 of QS-9000, it states all tools that are used to
determine conformance of a product to stated tolerances must be calibrated.
 This means one must calibrate each steel ruler on our manufacturing floor.
 This also means tracking, controlling, and dispositioning over three
hundred rulers!

Has any of you been down this road before?  How did you "get around" this
statement in the QS-9000 bible?  My thought is to label each steel ruler as
"For Reference Only", and only calibrate the rulers held by the floor
supervisors and their lead operators.  This would bring my quality
department's calibration responsibility for steel rulers down from over 300
per year to roughly 20.  It would also make tracking and controlling these
rulers much more manageable.

I am desperately seeking precidence in this matter.  My company won't have
a full blown audit until December, and I want to ensure whatever procedure
we put in place will have some time to gel before the auditors walk in.

Thanks in advance for your assistance

John W. Beemster
Quality Assurance Engineer
Bestop, Incorporated