Why FCA Forever Requirements are so important for suppliers?

FCA Forever Requirements are a group of activities that organizations must perform to ensure process stability and the quality of the manufactured product.

These include, among others:

• Proactive communication with FCA based on preventive customer information about quality and logistics issues. It should be remembered that in this case the customer can open the indicator in the SQP system with position 1 (and with the same PQ weight) according to the 08018 standard.
• Approval request from FCA before any accelerated process change.
• Customer approval request before introducing any internal change or change of the Tier 2 production location

Why are the above requirements so important at the moment?

The answer is in the following two specific FCA requirements, which are published on the IATF webpages, and which relate to FCA Forever Requirements:

• Requirement 7.4. – Communication: informs business partners that they should comply with the Forever Requirements described in the SQ.00012 procedure. This procedure is very important for persons who are working in quality departments and project managers who are direct contact for FCA SQE’s. There is a very helpful check list linked to procedure, that has a clear structure informing the organization of which activities based to a large extent on the risk analysis should be considered while submitting the check list for a given change.
• Requirement 8. 3. 1. – Type and extent of control – supplemental; in relation to its sub-suppliers, the organization should cascade and forward all quality requirements of the FCA group, eg: quality planning, PDR, Forever Requirements. During the Process Audits and Advance Quality Planning, this requirement can be checked by FCA SQE during their visit based on the new PPAP audit referring to the SQ.00010 standard. The requirement that must be met by the supplier in this point applies to clause 17.79.

The last FCA CSR, which is indirectly related to Forever Requirements, is included in requirement 8. 5. 3. – Property belonging to customers or external providers, which informs suppliers that increase productivity by duplication of forms, on which approval was already produced product based on the Plant Evaluation after the Pre-Series phase, should be managed through Forever Requirements.

In case of even partial missing Forever Requirements application, the client’s representatives may use a higher escalation tool such as Forever Requirements Violation (FRV). This applies in particular to situations referring to unauthorized changes in the process, construction (design), material, sub-supplier’s location / material and change in tooling capacity. Another scenario, when the FRV may apply to suppliers, concerns parts that will be produced from other (additional) locations.

If above issue will appear then:

• in supplier Incoming Material Quality score card (ex-Bid List) will be assigned 10 penalty points which will be present for next 6 months.
• supplier will obtain quality claim 20.1 named as "Violation of Customer Specific Requirements" according to standard 08018 with PQ weight equal 90.

The last procedure in which we'll find information about FR is procedure 9.01102 - point 5.13 - Product and process changes. For this reason it's also important to familiarize also with above document which is indicated in FCA CSR as one of core procedures which has to be known by suppliers.