Question

ABC was a medium-sized Hong Kong-based company with two manufacturing plants in China, one in Dongguan and the other in Shanghai with employees of 3,000. The company was manufacturing micro-were ovens in three different product lines including oven-P, oven-Q & oven-R series.While P & Q models were for its domestic customers, R models were designed for its overseas clients. The three product lines were targeting at difference market segments. 40% of their components were nevertheless shared among the three product series and 60% of the components were common to P & Q models.Basically,the components were divided into several categories including the casing,the heater,the glass front door, the electronic control, the magnetron, and the small mechanical and plastic parts. The following was the generic purchasing procedure that ABC was adopting to control its purchasing activities.
-User department (e.g, Production of Oven-Q) issued a Purchase Request (PR) to Purchasing Department for a component W(e.g., light bulb).
-Purchasing Department negotiated with the supplier about the price of manufacture of W.
-ABC issued a Purchase Order (PO) to detailing the specification of W and the required receiving date.
-Upon the receipt of order,Receiving Department checked the material against PO and issue Receiving Report (RR) to Incoming Quality Control(IQC)Department
-IQC check in accordance with the testing TEST-W101~108-MILSTD and issued a Testing Report (TR) to Purchasing Department to close the order.
-Accounting Department issued a cheque to the supplier upon received an invoice from it.


Given the following.problems/issues, what are your suggestions to the Purchasing Department?
a.The specification of components and parts were provided by the Design Department which employed a team of engineers in the discipline of electrical, electronic and mechanical engineering. Due to the frequent modification of design to suit the overseas market, the drawing of W was revised frequently that more often than not the engineers made hand-writing changes on the drawing and then issued to Purchasing for release.

Answer 1

Answer: Following are the suggestions for the purchasing department as below

• Purchasing department needs to ensure with design department/engineers that the drawing they have received is the latest modified drawing and all the potential changes are already mentioned on the received drawing. A written confirmation from design team will be a right approach for the purchasing department to avoid any drawing issue later.
• The purchasing need to ensure that the marked up drawing needs to have the revision number on the drawing and this revision number details needs to be mention in the PR & PO, so that it can be tracked throughout the development, procurement, inspection and quality control of the components.
• Purchasing to ensure that the suppliers are having the latest modified drawing with all the potential changes and the written confirmation from the design team that suppliers have latest modified drawing for development and procurement.
• Purchasing to ensure that the development and procurement of the components to be carried out as per the latest modified drawing only, as per written confirmation.
• Purchasing to ensure that the quality department inspects the parts as per the latest modified drawing and parts meets all the requirements as per the latest marked up drawing.