A Letter from the Nadcap SSC Chair - London Nadcap Meeting 2018

Hello, fellow Nadcap Suppliers! In keeping with the Supplier Support Committee’s (SSC) ongoing communication efforts, this letter will provide a brief summary to all Suppliers about the recent Nadcap meeting held June 18-21, 2018, in London, and a look ahead at what is coming your way in Pittsburgh in October. This is my last summary as Chair of your Supplier Support Committee. Jonathan Hebben became your next Chair on June 22, after the London meetings. I appreciate all of the support and participation of Nadcap Suppliers over the past 3 years. There were 300 Suppliers in attendance during the London meeting, 62 of whom attended the SSC general meeting Tuesday. We were once again very pleased at the level of participation. Important news applicable to Suppliers includes:

• We have seen continuing unprecedented Supplier attendance at our Monday morning Supplier sessions. The SSC has most of our events on Monday morning when most task groups are not open to Suppliers, and we schedule them following one another throughout the morning. This allows for fewer conflicts for Suppliers attending Nadcap meetings. We will maintain this schedule for Pittsburgh in October 2018, so plan to travel on Sunday and attend the Monday morning events. Suppliers over the past 2 years have found this to be very helpful; we are sure you will, too. Our general meeting remains scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
• Improvement action items have been determined from the 2017 Supplier Survey which yielded 12 actions that have been assigned to either the SSC or PRI. Key areas include training (more on-line, more regional, more RCCA with real NCRs used as examples, and checklist changes); communication (exploring social media and texting as additional means to reach Suppliers); website improvement (better organization, improved search function); and exploring web-based Nadcap meetings. These actions could have significant impact on the program.
• There were 33 concerns documented during open forums held in Pittsburgh in 2017 and Madrid in February. These have been assigned to the SSC, NMC or PRI. Key items here include readdressing redundant audits, improvement of flow down of requirements to special processors, and a request for Subscribers to make available to Suppliers the revision status of specifications. I had the honor of speaking with the PRI Board of Directors about these concerns as well.
• We also welcomed Jeremy Needs as our second European representative to the SSC.
• PRI is exploring enhancements to eAuditNet to allow users to set up a “watch list” to improve the ability to monitor the accreditation status of their Suppliers. This is in the earliest stages.
• An NMC checklist will be developed that replaces general and standard questions that must be included in every commodity’s base checklist; these items that are currently in commodity checklists will be removed. Hopefully this will result in a reduction in the number of checklist changes that we have seen in the past 2 years due to NMC requirements.
• An item that will potentially be in this new NMC checklist deals with validating compliance to 9100 management of change requirements to ensure process changes do not have unintended consequences.
• Supplier events planned for October 22-25, 2018, in Pittsburgh, PA, include:
  • A powerful line-up of events designed to provide information on the Nadcap system that will be particularly useful to new participants and first time meeting attendees starts at 9AM on Monday: SSC Leadership Team Opening Reception for all Suppliers – chat with experienced Suppliers and learn more about the Nadcap process, one on one – there are NO presentations; a Supplier Tutorial; Keys to a Successful Audit, shared by an experienced Supplier; eAuditNet Tutorial, presented by PRI staff; and a training session on Supplier Voting Membership which summarizes the benefits and responsibilities of task group participation. We will have a second open question session following all of the other sessions, assuming Suppliers may have more questions.
  • Our SSC General meeting will feature current Supplier news and updates on the survey and open forum action items. We have scheduled time for the NMC Chair, Richard Blyth of Rolls-Royce, to address Suppliers.
  • On Monday afternoon the SSC will sponsor a quick look at U.S. export control regulations and possibly a Subscriber update from Lockheed Martin.

Check back on the p-r-i.org web site to stay apprised of agenda changes.

• As a reminder, minutes from the SSC General meeting and all task group meetings are posted on the p-r-i.org website – take advantage and review them if you did not attend this meeting.
• To help keep you informed of checklist changes we are providing a list via email of those checklists which are being revised and/or balloted.

It is my hope that this meeting summary has been of value to you and has provided reasons for joining us in Pittsburgh - I hope to see you there! In the meantime, please let us know how we may better serve you by using the SSC Request Form which can be found online at p-r-i.org.  

Travel in on Sunday to take advantage of Monday morning Supplier events!

  In your service, Dale Harmon (Cincinnati Thermal Spray) Past Chair Advisor, Nadcap Supplier Support Committee