Receipt inspection

Quality control is also the term used as the name of a department. In most cases Quality Control Departments perform inspection and test activities and the name derives from the authority that such departments have been given. They sort good products from bad products and authorize the release of the good products. It is also common to find that Quality Control Departments perform supplier control activities, which are called Supplier Quality Assurance or Vendor Control. In this respect they are authorized to release products from suppliers into the organization either from the supplier s premises or on receipt in the organization. 

You should review the contract and the detail specifications to identify whether your existing controls will regulate quality within the limits required. You may need to change the limits, the standards, the techniques, the methods, the environment, and the instruments used to measure quality characteristics. One technique may be to introduce Just-in-time as a means of overcoming storage problems and eliminating receipt inspection. Another technique may be Statistical Process Control as a means of increasing the process yield. The introduction of these techniques needs to be planned and carefully implemented. 

The quality of the product or service can be verified by you on receipt using your normal inspection and test techniques. (This is the least costly of methods and usually applies where achievement of the requirements is measurable by examination of the end product.)... 

Subcontracts enable you to choose the degree of control exercised over your subcontractors. With suppliers, your choices are often limited as you have no privileges. Control over your suppliers is therefore exercised by the results of receipt inspection or subsequent inspections and tests. If your confidence in a supplier is low, you can increase the level of inspection and if high you can dispense with receipt inspection and rely on in-process controls to alert you to any deterioration in supplier performance. 

Subcontractor/supplier performance will be evident from audit reports, surveillance visit reports, and receipt inspections carried out by you or the third party if one has been employed. You need to examine these documents for evidence that the subcontractor s quality system is controlling the quality of the products and services supplied. You can determine the effectiveness of these controls by periodic review of the subcontractor s performance what some firms call vendor rating . By collecting data on the performance of subcontractors/suppliers over a long period you can measure their effectiveness and rate them on a scale from excellent to poor. In such cases you should measure at least three characteristics quality, delivery, and service. Quality would be measured by the ratio of defective conforming products received delivery would be measured by the number of days early or late and service would be measured by the responsiveness to actions requested by you on scale of excellent to poor. The output of these reviews should be in the form of updates to the list of assessed subcontractors/suppliers. 

It is important that you inform the subcontractor through the contract of how the product or service will be accepted. Will it be as a result of receipt inspection at the specified destination or as a result of acceptance tests witnessed on site by your authorized representative These details need to be specified at the tendering stage so that the subcontractor can make provision in the quotation to support any of your activities on site. If you have invoked ISO 9001 in the subcontract, you are protected by clause 4.6.4.2. If you have not, you need to specify a similar provision in your subcontract, otherwise you may lose the right to reject the product later. There is no requirement for you to document your proposal to verify product at the subcontractor s premises but such a plan would indeed be a useful section in any quality plan that you produced. (See also Control of subcontractors in this chapter.)... 

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. 

When customers visit your subcontractors or inspect product on receipt, they have the right to reserve judgement on the final acceptance of the product. The product is not under their direct control and they may not be able to carry out all the tests and inspec-... 

Name of product, part numbers, serial numbers, and other identifying features Name of customer and source of product if different Delivery note reference, date of delivery Receipt inspection requirements... 

Make provision for customer supplied product to be processed through receipt inspection. 

Provide a form for conveying to the customer the results of any defects detected during receipt inspection, maintenance, or operational use. 

Regarding purchases made by the supplier, there are three parties the ultimate customer, the supplier, and the supplier s supplier (the subcontractor). The standard has overlooked the fact that items are often inspected on receipt for conformance with the supplier s purchase order and not against requirements placed by the supplier s customer. Product may be nonconforming with the supplier s requirements but not the... 

If the user is unable to verify that requirements have been met, you will need to provide evidence either that it has passed your receipt inspection or that it has been certified by the vendor. 

Receipt inspection doesn t need to be a department, a section, a separate room, a full time job for someone, or a particular person. It is a process through which all product must pass, even those received on a Just-in-time basis. Someone should verify that products can pass uninspected. At a customs post some people are stopped, others are waved through all are inspected to some degree - it all depends on the confidence gained by observation. 

So what should you put into your quality plan or documented procedures on receipt inspection The main aspects to cover are as follows ... 

Define how the receipt inspection personnel obtain current purchasing requirements. 

Categorize all items that you purchase so that you can assign levels of receipt inspection based on given criteria (see later in this chapter under Determining the amount and nature of receiving inspection). 

Where dimensional and functional checks are necessary, define how the receipt inspection personnel obtain the acceptance criteria and how they are to conduct the inspections and tests. 

As stated previously everything should be passed through a receipt inspection. However, in order to relate the degree of inspection to the importance of the item, you should categorize purchases, an example of which is as follows ... 

These criteria would need to be varied depending on whether the items being supplied were in batches or separate. However, these are the kind of decisions you need to make in order to apply practical receipt inspection procedures. 

Within your procedures you need to provide a means of identifying which items have been subject to inspection at the subcontractor s premises and the receipt inspection action to be taken depending on the level of that inspection. In one case, the product may have been accepted by your representative on the subcontractor s premises. In another case, a product from the same batch may have been accepted by your representative but not the one that has been delivered. Alternatively your representative may have only performed a quality audit to gain a level of confidence. You need to specify the inspection to be carried out in all such cases. The standard emphasizes that consideration should also be given to the recorded evidence provided. Even if someone has performed inspection at the subcontractor s premises, if there is no evidence of conformance the inspections are of little value. The fact that an inspection was carried out is insufficient. There has to be a statement of what was checked and what results were obtained and a decision as to whether conformance has been achieved. Without such evidence you may need to repeat some of the inspections carried out on the subcontractor s premises. 

In continuous production, product is inspected by taking samples from the line which are then examined while the line continues producing product. In such cases you will need a means of holding product produced between sampling points until the results of the tests and inspections are available. You will also need a means of releasing product when the results indicate that the product is acceptable. So a Product Release Procedure or Held Product Procedure may be necessary. The standard implies, however, that if you have released product under positive recall procedures you do not need to hold product while in-process inspection and tests are performed. The reference to clause 4.10.3(a) is also ambiguous because the inspections and tests carried out in accordance with the quality plan or documented procedures may not cover those necessary to verify product on receipt into the plant. It would be wise to hold any product until you have... 

The standard requires the quality plan or documented procedures for final inspection and testing to require that all the specified inspections and tests, including those specified either on receipt of product or in-process, have been earned out and that the data meets specified requirements. 

Establish a receipt inspection area for processing incoming goods. 

Provide measuring facilities and equipment for use in the receipt inspection area and measures for their control. 

Establish a means of tracing product back to its inspection on receipt. 

Do attach labels to products on receipt to indicate their inspection status. 

Do ensure current purchasing data is available at the place of receipt inspection. 

Don t place product back in the receipt inspection area once it has been released. 

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-... 

In order to preserve the quality of items that have passed receipt inspection they should... 

The requirement may not apply to all product acceptance decisions. If your acceptance of the end product does not depend upon acceptance decisions being made on its component parts, any sampling carried out on receipt inspection or in-process is not important to the product acceptance decision and can therefore be ignored in your documented quality system. This is a wise course of action if you can be sure this will always be the case but if you can t, and more often than not you won t know, it is prudent to encompass a//sampling activities in your quality system. 

Receipt inspection - a technique for verifying product characteristics where sampling can be used on large quantities to reduce inspection costs and improve throughput. 

Each analytical laboratory inspected shipments as they were received, and documented the receipt of the samples and their condition. Any problems were immediately communicated to the appropriate field phase management study personnel to facilitate immediate corrections, such as re-shops required because the wrong commodity had been sampled. 

Is each receipt of material checked Yes. The supplier once sent a cylinder of phosgene. Since then, a test is performed by the maintenance staff. In addition, the fusible plugs are inspected for evidence of leakage, before a cylinder is hooked up. 

Based on the verification process already defined, upon receipt of purchased material the laboratory inspects and verifies that the received materials conform to the purchase requirements. When the verification is made at the supplier s premises there is a need to make arrangements for such verification and for a definition of the method for the release of products. 

Subject to any arrangements which may have been concluded between the Community and third countries, the Commission, upon receipt of a reasoned request from a Member State or on its own initiative, or a Member State may propose that the trial site and/or the sponsor s premises and/or the manufacturer established in a third country undergo an inspection. The inspection shall be carried out by duly qualified Community inspectors. 

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