The quality staff at Elyria Spring is well versed in Level 3 PPAP requirements as dictated by AIAG standards. Our documentation matches all that is required for these types of PPAP submissions. Many of our components are sold through 2nd and 3rd tier automotive suppliers who in turn supply to Ford, GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Honda. These PPAP's have been successfully submitted with full approval from our customers. Beyond any PPAP requirements, Elyria Spring caters to our customers by submitting new product submissions meeting individual requirements. Our staff in quality extends their expertise in aiding our customers in many different types of 1st article submissions.
In addition to these items, it is also a standard practice to involve cross functional teams when new parts are ordered by our customers. These advance planning activities involve personnel from purchasing, tool room, production and quality. All involved review the customers' design to assure that we can produce the product and have the resources necessary to measure and document what the customers' blueprint is designating. A new goal that we have set for 2007 is to do post production reviews of these new jobs. The post production review will enable these same personnel to evaluate if our advanced planning was thorough. Any lapses will be recorded and we can then use these for future advance planning activities.
As an ISO certified company, we continually look at opportunities to enhance both our products and our quality systems. To this end, we recently implemented SPC training with all of our production personnel. For many of our personnel, this was a refresher course, but the goal of the training was to have quality and production work together to obtain common goals. Our Registrar has and will continue to perform bi-annual surveillance audits. Traditionally, these surveillance audits have come out either with zero non conformances or very minor non conformances. Our registrar reports that this is due to the excellent internal auditing that occurs within the company on an annual basis. As of our last surveillance on 12-19-06, we had zero findings.
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