— SOURCING PROCESS —

PROJECT INITIATION

Customer provides approved samples and/or photos and/or written part or product specifications in the form of English narratives or engineering drawings or an inspection checklist which define the appearance, form, fit, and function of the subject part or product identifying any criteria that are deemed critical to quality.

 

PRE-PRODUCTION DEVELOPMENT

We locate and qualify several prospective suppliers for each part that is to be sourced. We quantify the quality gap (the delta between the prospective supplier’s expected performance and current performance). We develop and manage a corrective action worklist of improvements in machinery, tooling, process, material, design and workmanship that the supplier must agree to implement before production parts can be approved. We provide periodic pre-production progress reports to the customer. Concurrently, we manage the supplier’s tool build schedule according to the product development plan, including the complete evaluation of first-article samples and subsequent modification of tooling. Upon the customer’s approval of satisfactory first-article samples, we authorize the prospective supplier to enter the pilot lot phase of product development.

 

PILOT LOT & PRODUCTION

Throughout the on-going production of both first-time business and repeat orders, we perform in-process oversight and a rigorous single or double- sampling final inspection of the entire production lot based on a sample size taken at random from the subject lot according to Military Standard 105E using customer-approved AQL’s and inspection test criteria. Immediately following the inspection, we provide a copy of the inspection result both to the supplier’s representative and to the customer. In the case of a failed lot, we request confirmation of the failure from the customer based on the claimed and quantified reason(s) for the inspector’s rejection. If the customer concurs with our inspector’s judgment, we request the supplier to initiate immediate corrective action including a rework plan which provides a date for re-inspection by us and the customer.