Customer verification

Ordering system No product stewardship program or formal customer verification process. 

Generically there are two types of requirements defining requirements and verification requirements. Defining requirements specify the features and characteristics required of a product, process, or service. (Within the standard these are termed specified requirements.) These may be wholly specified by the customer or by the supplier or a mixture of the two. Verification requirements specify the requirements for verifying that the defining requirements have been achieved and again may be wholly specified by the customer or by the supplier or a mixture of the two. With verification requirements, how-... 

The standard requires the supplier to verify that changes are validated (including all subcontractor changes) and, when required by the customer, additional verification/ identification requirements shall be met. 

Within the clause on verification in ISO/TS 16949 there are no constraints on the standards to be applied to development models used for verifying the design. There are, however, requirements for prototypes under Design validation but they only apply when required by the customer. 

The requirements pertain to your customer verifying product purchased by you either at your supplier or on your premises. Verification of purchased product is normally carried out by the supplier before or after receipt as part of the purchasing process but may also be carried out by the customer. However, due to the standard locating most of the inspection and test requirements in clause 4.10, the receipt inspection requirements are displaced. 

The standard requires the supplier to establish and maintain procedures for verification of customer supplied product provided for incorporation into the supplies or for related activities. 

The standard requires that any such product that is lost, damaged, or is otherwise unsuitable for use be recorded and reported to the customer and again advises the supplier that verification bp the supplier does not absolve the customer of the responsibility to provide acceptable product. 

The control plans should make provision for any specific controls required by the customer and these must be implemented. Evidence is required to show that all the controls specified in the control plan have been implemented and a way of doing this is to make provision for recording verification of conformity against the relevant requirement in the control plan. 

The standard requires a /ayout inspection and a functional verification to applicable customer engineering material and performance standards to be performed for all products at a frequency specified in the control plan. 

Devices that you use for product verification at all stages in the quality loop need to be controlled and this includes devices used for inspection and test on receipt of product, in-process, and final acceptance before release to the customer. It also includes devices used during design and development for determining product characteristics and for design verification. Some characteristics cannot be determined by calculation and need to be derived by experiment. In such cases the accuracy of devices you use must be con-... 

Where and to the extent that the availability of technical data pertaining to the measurement devices is a specified requirement, the standard requires such data to be made available, when required fay the customer or customer s representative, for verification that it is functionally adequate. 

You are only required to indicate whether product conforms to the inspections and tests performed. This is not the same as indicating whether the product conforms to the customer requirements. It may well pass the prescribed inspections and tests but these inspections and tests may not be sufficiently comprehensive to verify conformance to all the customer s requirements. However, the only indication you can give is the product s conformance or nonconformance with some verification requirement. It follows therefore that you should not go around putting reject labels on products, or acceptance labels for that matter, if you have not performed a specific inspection to determine conformance. There are only three conditions uninspected , inspected and found conforming , and inspected and found nonconforming . If you have a policy of only applying labels after inspection, anything without a label is therefore deemed uninspected, unless it has been installed and the label removed. 

The standard does not require you to use statistical techniques but identify the need for them. Within your procedures you will therefore need a means of determining when statistical techniques will be needed to determine product characteristics and process capability. One way of doing this is to use checklists when preparing customer specifications, design specifications, and verification specifications and procedures. These checklists need to prompt the user to state whether the product characteristics or process capability will be determined using statistical techniques and if so which techniques are to be used. 

Verification of laboratory competence to satisfy organizational or customer needs... 

The following considerations, when applied during method development, are likely to produce more robust, reliable, and transferable methods (a) the concerns of the customer (user) are considered in advance, (b) key process input variables are identified, (c) criticaTto-quality factors are determined, (d) several method verification tests are installed, (e) proactive evaluation of method performance during development is performed, (f) continuous customer involvement and focus are institutionalized, and (g) method capability assessment (suitability to be applied for release testing against specification limits) is established. 

The manufacturer should establish and maintain procedures for verification, storage, and maintenance of customer supplied products intended for incorporation into the... 

Our customer or our customer s representatives are afforded the right to verify at the source or upon receipt that the purchased product conforms to the specified requirements. Product verification by the customer does not absolve our operation of the responsibility to provide a fully acceptable product, nor does it preclude subsequent rejection. When our customer carries out product verification at a vendor s plant, such verification is used as evidence of effective quality control of the vendor. 

The incoming materials are inspected to ensure compliance with the materials specification. The nonconforming materials are rejected. The facility is provided to the customers to perform specific verification test at the company premises. 

Where the organization or customer intends to perform verification at the supplier s premises, the organization states the intended verification arrangements and method of product release in the purchasing information. 

Customer support Quality management/standards Software/system development methodology Testing methods/verification and validation Technical personnel... 

---