00-20-14 changes to the QA Program

[Smokey]

I just got an email for proposed changes to the QA program in chapter 9. Has anyone seen this? They are not rewriting the program to state that a PR will be done on ALL SR's and QR's with an action J,K,F. So pretty much everything that comes up QR or SR now will have to be done as a PR. This is by far one of the more stupid changes I have seen! Thoughts?

[Hoopty]

They are not rewriting the program to state that a PR will be done on ALL SR's and QR's with an action J,K,F.

Do you mean "They are now rewriting the program?"

As it is right now, PR's should be accomplished as an RCA function of critical non-conformities found during QR's and SR's.  To me, it sounds like they are just clarifying that a little further by making them necessary only for the J,K, & F actions.

Without seeing the proposed change as it will be written, I'm just guessing here.  Also, I just glanced at 00-20-14 for the first time in about 2 years, so I'm a little rusty too.  Somebody feel free to jump in and correct me if I'm wrong.

[deerhunter]

The QR or SR will be done in a process review format.  This makes perfect sense considering the calibration intervals of items are established so that 85% of the time they are supposed to return for calibration still in tolerance, and a cal tech could "accidentally" turn out a good item without actually knowing what they are doing.  I believe this new requirement is being established so that the QA can not only verify the parameters are met, but also verify the technician knows what they are doing more than just the once a year PR evaluation.  Consider it a training opportunity, or a tool to highlight a weakness in a technician that needs further training, moved to a less technical area, or to be weeded out of the career field.  This is an outstanding modification to the Chapter 9 requirements in 00-20-14.

[Smokey]

Yes I meant they are now re-writing the QA program. I don't think this useful at all! For one thing the PR was supposed to be a Management tool to be used to find a weak technician or a weak Laboratory process. You can always increase the PR rate. What is going to happen is you are going to have someone do a PR on a Pressure Guage only to turn around the next day and do a PR on a Pressure Guage!
The best way to find bad techncians or bad processes is to select PR's according to high NC areas and pick more thorough calibrations or at least some harder procedures. This will be felt a lot more by smaller labs than bigger labs. I have seen an SR(done at the end of the month) be selected for a QR only to be selected for an SR again the next month and another QR. This just so happened to be an 8340B, with this new program you will have 2 people tied up for almost 4 days!

Now I agree the overall intent is a good one but I don't see how this will be helping to find a bad techncian or a problem area when you have no control over the PR. If I were to see a trend of NC's in K3 I would perform a few more PR's . I think that with this program you will find a lot more redundancy in QA than before.

Decrease the QR rate, and select a higher percentage of PR's but on SELECTED processes this way you can use the so called "management tool" in a more effective way.

[jimmyc]

i totally agree with smokey, if there is a problem with a certain area of your lab, increase the QR's for that area, find the weaknesses and conduct training.   isn't that what the RCA process is all about.   if there is a technician weakness, increase prt's to quarterly.   i have had 5 or 6 items come up for qr, a couple SR's, and a Gov Qr come up all in one week.   to rerun all those items takes lots of time.   As for considering any nonconformity as just a training opportunity, technicians all know this isn't the case.   the RCA process is set up as a guilty until not proven as guilty system.   i don't have a problem with it because i believe it is set up to get the best product out to the user.   As for the accidentally turning out a good item, we all go through prt's to get a K stamp, PRT's to get signed off on new items, so if techs can accidentally turn out good equipment, we need to look at the process of signing off technicians.   

[cylski]

I've been out of the game for a while, but the way I see it is you guys need to calculate the cost of the change and submit for additional manning.   Of course your FAMs will want to combine all the data and forward a copy to AFMETCAL.   I assume they would fund the additional manning until the individual commands get it added to their budget.