VENDOR AUDITS
Vendor Audits – Is There A Better Answer?
Larry Jackson | Contributing Author
I was a chief inspector for more than 20 years and worked in Part 121 and Part 135 flight operations. During that time, I had the opportunity to see many things come from the FAA and the aviation industry in the way of regulations and need for compliance. One thing that I witnessed and still deal with today is the requirement for an operator to conduct vendor audits. In the beginning, before fancy ISO requirements and FAA inspectors, operators usually conducted business with vendors directly and knew them as well as what they did. From my perspective, I knew the local and out of state vendors, and had visited their facilities. I often requested and was granted access to their process of conducting maintenance on our parts, transmissions and engines. No big deal. Then, one day, an FAA inspector came to my door and
asked that we show him our vendor files. Of course I had no real format to follow or files per se to show. I knew where my parts were, who was working on them and the process expected to be conducted. For the most part, it was my thinking that it was the FAA’s job to conduct audits on Part 145 repair stations, and it was their process, not mine. Silly me. As with most things with the FAA, that was not the case. The inspector informed us that we needed to conduct audits by letter, phone and/or physical presence and document that we, not they, were doing the total quality job to ensure that our vendors were on the up and up. I never really saw the need based on our operation. It seemed like they were just having us conduct additional inspections and audits and supply them with the
documentation and findings we had. This was prior to ISO and its massive requirements and processes. As time went by, we found ourselves having to meet FAA and ISO requirements that may or may not mean anything to our operation, reveal any findings that were useful in context, and pretty much waste time.
The Vendor Side Now I find myself on the other side of things and a vendor to thousands of customers. One of my biggest complaints is the use of poorly-designed forms. Forms that repeat the same information and forms that cannot be filled out on the computer as a Word document or PDF form (fill in the box). Chief inspectors, the inspection department, or the purchasing departments are conducting these audits by mail (old school) or e-mail (preferred). Again, just a check in the box and fill out the paper work, sign it and send it back to us. Many times these audits have the same information repeating itself, same phone number placed in several areas, same details in the same areas and — what is worse — they will send two forms, both different in context or requirement, but both having the same information!
The Money Spent on Labor Now being on the vendor side, burning time and labor is a major concern. Taking the time to fill out an audit form (average 10 to 15 minutes), having to answer questions that are not relevant for the business they are supporting, printing
34
HelicopterMaintenanceMagazine.com April | May 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48