Benefits of a material review board

Do you think all the parts made in your shop are good parts? You’re probably more realistic and know some parts will be bad and that you’ll want to get a handle on how many out-of-spec parts are being made and what work center is making them. Perhaps you have vendor problems and don’t know it. Start a material review board to get the answers.

An MRB is not as intimidating as it might sound. The board can consist of a handful of individuals who review all nonconforming products in a facility. In larger facilities, there is typically a manufacturing engineer, a quality engineer, a purchasing representative and a materials person on the board. I’m on the MRB where I work, and we also have a mechanical engineer and a shop representative. Smaller shops that don’t have several engineers may have a quality individual, a shop supervisor, a shop representative and someone from purchasing. Regardless of shop size, an MRB is the only group that can make a disposition on any questionable product.

My company’s group meets on a daily basis—first thing in the morning—to be as proactive as possible. Smaller shops may do this every other day or every third day.

As an example, where I work the process begins by having someone gather all the nonconforming parts from the previous day, if any. An inspection tag with the reason for the failure is attached to each part. The tag remains with the part until a disposition is made. The parts are placed in an area where we can easily see and handle them. We then discuss the items and evaluate their issues.

We have four categories for nonconforming parts: scrap, rework, return to vendor and accept as is.

For the scrap category, we evaluate and determine what went wrong. Can the part be reworked? What was the root cause of the failure? Can it be prevented? Was it a production part or a low-volume part? These are just some of the questions. If the part is scrapped, the dollar value for the material and the work performed to that point is determined and charged against that work center. The amount is tabulated for the year to see how much scrap is produced at each center to determine corrective actions.