Customer Requirements Management

This post sets out checklists, considerations and control measures to ensure that customer requirements are fully understood and managed within a manufacturing organization in order to optimize customer satisfaction.

Once you have established a relationship with the customer and have agreed terms and conditions and service/performance levels with them, you need to ensure that, at all times, you are clear on what the customer requirements are.

A very important consideration here is to be aware of the lead times the supply chain operates within, as this is vital in managing customer expectations right from the start – please see the ‘Available to Promise (ATP)’ point herein below.

Customer Requirements Specification (CRS) Pack

This should contain at least the following:

· Product Drawings, with specifications and measurements

· Product Handling and Packaging requirements

· Bill(s) of Material (BoM)

· Component specifications

· Approved suppliers, with alternates (or the process for approving alternates)

· Customer Sales Order

· Customer Forecast (to cover component lead times)

This CRS pack will then be the guide for further requirements specification work that will be required in order to translate this requirement into exactly how it can be executed and met. Staff in Sales/Customer Programs will now need to co-ordinate with staff in Project Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Industrialisation, Production Planning, Purchasing, Finance, Quality Control and Stores in order to make this achievable. This is managed by making use of a product data pack.

Product Data Pack (PDP)

This should be managed by Project Engineering, and should contain at least the following:

· All of the CRS Pack collated by Sales/Customer Programs

· Routings defined by Industrial Engineering

· Component & supplier data defined by Requirements Engineering

o Supplier terms and conditions (approved by Finance)

o Supply Agreements approved by Finance

o Minimum Order Quantities (MOQ), lead times, handling and storage requirements defined by the supplier(s)

o Component and product shelf life

o Pricing

· Any new equipment or tooling requirements (a multi-disciplined team will need to evaluate these), along with timing to be commissioned.

· Capacity requirements and availability as defined by Production Planning (with Industrial Engineering)

· Financial implications and settings for master data fields affecting stockholding and working capital management as defined in conjunction with Finance

· Inspection, storage and handling capacity and requirements as defined by Quality Control and Stores

· Costing review and approval process and sign-off by Product Engineering and Finance.

The above may include iterations of product design, development, prototyping and industrialization, all of which will be managed by Product Engineering in conjunction with all the departments they require assistance on in doing so (e.g. Requirements Engineering and Industrial Engineering).

Once the master data has been set up, costed and signed off by the responsible parties, Availability to Promise (ATP) Checks and reports need to be executed and/or reviewed and analysed by Sales/Customer Programs staff in order to understand when the customer expectations and demand can realistically be met. This will be an ongoing check, as circumstances and requirements change.

Engineering Change Control (ECC)

In order to ensure proper control and that all stakeholders are informed at all times, any changes to the PDP are to be agreed and signed off by representatives from all the departments highlighted above, and monitored and implemented by the assigned Project Managers (Product Engineering). These signed-off ECC documents should include:

· Details of the change, with responsibility to implement assigned and agreed

· Duration of the change, with responsibility to implement and monitor assigned and agreed (e.g. BoM settings to be active for MRP or not for a period – someone must be responsible and accountable to both de-activate and re-activate those settings at the right time).

· Communication and/or training associated with the change along with assigned and agreed responsibility to execute, including who to train and by when.

In order to safeguard the company’s best interest and manage the highest levels of customer retention and satisfaction, customer surveys should be undertaken at least annually by the Sales/Customer Programs staff, and the complete above processes (with associated checklists for the CRS and PDP) should be audited for full compliance by the ISO/BMS staff, with observations and NCRs raised and closed timeously as is encountered.