【转帖】expiration of deviations with suppliers

yang686526

expiration of deviations with suppliers
i have spent my career (20 years) in off site reasearch and developmentand have taken a new position managing an engineering department in a small ("old school") sheetmetal manufactuer. my question is... if no date of expiration on a deviation with a customer - does it expire? i have been told that it is an industry standard that it will expire witht the next revision of that part.
these folks are trying to change their ways of doing business from agreements on the golf course to in writing. no more wink and nod kind of orders and changes to them. it has been bitting them in the butt for some time. i have worked in global companies that were either iso standards or astm and sae. am trying to help them transition but can't find an answer to the problem.
appreciate your advice.
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my current employer is in a similar situation, trying to order parts to prints and standards.
in the iso and s environments i worked in, all deviations had an explicit expiration, be it a date, production run, or upcoming revision. none were allowed to go indefinitely, i.e. the next revision had to be coming soon and ecn started almost immediately.
appreciate the reply. it is a challenge deciphering the "old ways" of working people are trying to hold on to and make needed changes to get them in a better place. it is something of a hassle that we need to track what deviations and drawing were not corrected when the new rev came through. i shouldn't say hassle just an oppurtunity for improvement. when hired i found it hard to believe there was so much low hanging friut in the one plant. so for "pats on the back" i guess i need to really get started on this new found problem. the customer is not changing past deviated problems with the next rev and we "thought" if left all for max # of parts it wouldn't ever expire.
thanks again.

agree with tick that deviations (or production permits/concessions as they were called in the uk) had a finite life.  typically for a given qty or for the length of a contract or similar.  where applicable changes would be incorporated at the next rev obviating the need for the deviation to carry on infinitely.
do you control the prints or are they the customers?  is this what is muddying the waters.
kenat,
we always put a limit on deviations.  also, it we deviate the same thing more than once it is mandatory that we change the drawing.  
we once bought a product line from a competitor.  engineering was told we didn't have to do a thing, just make it like they made it.  receiving inspection immediately started rejecting material from all their suppliers.  old open ended concessions & deviations started pouring out of the fax machine.  we had to change nearly every drawing to document how the parts actually were made.