Relations with subcontractor and ISO 9001

Main contractor will request subcontractor to records their inspection activities in the form they provided according and comply to their procedure. On the other hand, subcontractor also has establish own procedure and records as required by ISO standards.

From my opinion, both main and sub's forms shall be used and filled in by subcontractor because it is mandatory for subcontractor to comply with main contractor requirement in order to maintain ISO requirement for the main contractor and it is also mandatory for the subcontractor to comply to ISO standards and keep records for its own.

So in an inspection, there shall be two forms are used, one from main contractor and will be kept by main contractor and one from subcontractor to be kept for subcontractor proof of their QMS implementation.

I t hink it is logical but I need confirmation whether it is indeed the common practice for subcontractor company.

Answer:

It is not a very common practice for organization to prescribe records to its subcontractors, it is not a nonconformity but it definitely isn't something that the standard requires. But if the main organization decided to prescribe a procedure and records to sub contractor, then in the point of view of the subcontractor there is no need to double the records of their own, they can use the main company records and refer to them in the Quality Manual or some other procedure.

There is no need or requirement of the standard to have two records for the same thing, regardless of the origin of the record. The records and procedures provided by the main company will be considered as external documents in the QMS of the subcontractor and that is all.