Your supplier messed up. Why does your customer want a corrective action from you?

To your customer, your supplier is part of your system. Here's how to write a CAR that gets accepted first time.

It's one of the most common questions we see. A supplier ships bad parts, you raise a supplier corrective action request (SCAR) with them, and then your own customer asks you for a corrective action report too. It feels unfair. It wasn't your mistake.

Why the customer is right to ask

Your customer bought from you, not from your supplier. As far as they're concerned, everything you buy in is part of your quality system. ISO 9001 says the same thing: you stay responsible for anything you buy in that ends up in your product (clause 8.4).

So "supplier error" isn't your root cause. It's what happened. Your root cause is why it got past you.

Find your own root cause

Ask why the faulty parts reached your customer. The answer is usually one of these:

• You accepted a certificate of conformity with no checks of your own.
• Incoming inspection didn't cover the feature that failed.
• The supplier changed something (a process, a sub-supplier, a material) and nobody told you.
• The supplier was never properly approved for that process in the first place.

Fix your side

• Verify special processes. Plating, heat treatment and welding can't be checked by eye. Ask for test evidence, or test samples yourself.
• Tighten checks until the supplier proves itself. Inspect or test every batch for a set period, then step back down.
• Track supplier performance. Rejects, late deliveries and complaints, reviewed monthly. A simple scorecard is enough.

Write the report

Own the escape. Describe what you've changed in your own system, then reference the supplier's corrective action as supporting evidence. A report that says "we've told the supplier off" gets bounced back. One that shows you've closed your own gap usually gets accepted first time.

Next: Three ISO 9001 myths that stop small firms even trying