Standardization of Cooperation between Production and Supply Quality in Production Organization

Standardization of processes is currently an essential part of manufacturing organizations. It is a very effective way to increase efficiency in achieving the desired goals, making organizations more competitive. However, it is important that processes are standardized at all levels without exception. It is enough that a few processes do not have clearly defined duties and responsibilities and the performance of the whole system is noticeably reduced. The standardization of the cooperation process between production and supplier quality departments was carried out in an unnamed organization. The basic activity in which these two departments worked together was to solve the problems with the supplied material. Production quality gave impulse from production about the problem with the supplied material and the supplier quality solved this problem by issuing a complaint to the supplier. However, this process often led to inadequate analysis, loss or misunderstanding of the information, or to the issuing of complaints with considerable delay. These problems stemmed from insufficiently defined responsibilities and from a non-standardized process of cooperation between these departments. The aim of the article was to define responsibilities for both departments, to create a flow chart for the procedure for managing nonconforming input material and to create a form for submitting the information needed for opening of claim to the supplier. Subsequently, the proposed methods were applied to a specific complaint, which confirmed, that thanks to standardization, the process of opening and resolving supplier complaints was significantly streamlined and the cooperation between these two departments was significantly improved