When starting cooperation with a Stellantis-FCA customer, each production plant should receive appropriate documentation from its engineering and sales department.
Such documents will facilitate cooperation between customer’s representative and the plant during pre-launch phase and current production.
Sourcing phase documentation
The first fundamental document that the production plant should receive from their sales department or program manager is FGP.42 – Sourcing Package. It’s important because:
- Is mentioned several times in the Stellantis-FCA customer specific requirements
- Determines the using of the following documents both in the pre-launch phase and current production:
- Additional Quality Requirement
- Basic Requirement Check List – this document is mentioned in two CSR’s and more information is stated also in FGP.39.
- Manufacturing Feasibility Assessment which should be verified during the Advance Quality Planning or Process Audit in point 3.1
- Verified during Advance Quality Planning or Process Audit in point 1.1. by the customer’s representative (PPAP level 4 and 5) or by the production plant (PPAP level 1,2,3)
Contract is not only sales department know-how
Above document contains the following relevant information for the production plant:
- IPTV warranty indicators targets (Incidents Per Thousand Vehicles) for the one-year and two-year period of car using by final client.
- Warranty period applied for returns from the field analysis – usually it’s a combination of the warranty period (often equal 24 months for the European market) and mileage. In this case, the previous condition counts.
- Service parts quantity [%] that must be added to the daily production dedicated to the first assembly in OEM plants. Most often it is assumed that it’s 10%, but it’s worth verifying this provision in the contract each time.
- Cooperation with “Direct-Buy” sub-suppliers which are selected by the customer to provide components to production facility. Why it’s so important? Because responsibility for launching such sub-suppliers (named also Tier 2) in the pre-launch phase is managed by customer, with the support of the plant representative.
Only from current production, full responsibility for the “direct-buy” sub-supplier indicated by the customer is moved on production plant. Of course, other agreements can be defined in the responsibility matrix named as RASI chart and descripted below.
- RASI Chart – it’s worth having it, because thanks to it production plant knows for what activities is responsible (R) and what client, it also mentions who approves (A), supports (S) and who informs (I) about planned and performed activities.
Organization engineering
R&D department (also known as Engineering or Product & Development) is an essential element in a documentation sourcing puzzle that is important for production facility. They mainly include:
- Product Card, in which the supplier can find information on warranty indicators (also included in the contract) and the time period for revalidation tests performing, which are related to CSR for IATF 8.6.2 requirement. In the Customer Specific Requirements, the time that is defined for this activity is 12 months, however, the Product Card is the superior document and therefore, if it includes a lower frequency, it should be taken into account for this activity.
- Supplier Product Validation SPV. It’s an crucial document because agreements that will be defined in the pre-launch phase may affect the scope of re-qualification tests that the production plant will manage in the current production. An important element that the organization’s engineering must meet, is the definition of tests that will later be re-performed as part of requalification tests.
It has to be also underlined that if the related section to this activity is not completed, the production plant will be required to perform all tests.
- Information from warranty returns management area, which is related to whether the analysis will require the customer to ship the entire component that is sent to the OEM production facility, or whether it’s possible to send the appropriate sub-component.
Such information will allow the production plant to put an appropriate “filter” on the input, thanks to which it will be possible to immediately finish the analysis or inform the customer to send the rest of the subcomponents if the analysis has to be continued.
Here, however, it should be noted that even in such a case it will be possible to lose the proof for defined problem, because such a part must be reassembled, most often out of standard production process.
- Information whether there is a Diagnostic Procedure for the dealer for the replacement of parts covered by the warranty period. You may ask: “but why should I implement it?” Namely, that in the event of creating and implementing such a procedure, Stellantis-FCA will not charge the production plant with 50% of the costs for the analyzes from NFT (No trouble Found) group.
In such a situation, the liability for NTF is reduced to zero, thanks to which it is possible to define a lower Technical Factor [%], which thus measurably reduces the costs incurred under the warranty responsibility of the supplier.
- DFMEA severity, when production plant is co-responsible for the project (named also as co-designer). Above value is important because, it can be used when designing the PFMEA production process, not based on the classification of special customer characteristics.
FGP.24 – guideline how to manage customer tooling and equipment
Above standard is not mentioned in any CSR therefore not all production plants are aware of its existence. It’s important because it defines what activities should be used as part of maintenance by the organization for the appropriate type of tools or equipment.
Please note that the customer sends only FGP.24 standard part that addresses the specifics of the supplier process, so it should be not surprise to receive a document starting from page 17 for example.
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