Normally 4 weeks after placement of purchase order or 2 weeks after submitting the critical documents, a kick off meeting is held.
It is advisable to hold the Kick off meeting after one cycle of critical document review in order to have a more effective and meaningful meeting. This is to allow supplier to incorporate the comments made by the client on the first revision of critical documents.
It is always a good practice to turn around the meeting agenda so all relevant parties are on the same page.
The package engineer chairs the K O M meeting while buyer, quality engineer, document controller and discipline engineers such as electrical, process, material, welding (as needed) would support the package engineer.
Kick off meeting is normally held at the client’s place.
Kick off meeting is intended to finalize the following:
- Finalizing Vendor Document Requirement List (VDRL); list of documents that vendor should submit for approval, review or for information
- Assign a submittal date against each document that is called Vendor Document Requirement Schedule (VDRS). Normally, these dates are not exactly fixed but tentative and depends on exact package fabrication progress , for example T minus 2 means that a particular document should be submitted 2 weeks before Test.
- Data sheet finalized (package engineer fills in the design input and output and any special note such as inspection requirement while the supplier filling out in the rest).
- Design calculation approved or at least design methodology, design input, design out, design verification and design validation methods are agreed upon.
- Engineering drawing finalized or at least draft drawing is reviewed with a target completion date for submittal and approval before commencement of fabrication.
Buyer in conjunction with the package engineer shall review the proposed fabrication plan and check whether it is in line with the VDRS, that is, document submittal schedule is aligned with the fabrication phases.
Expeditor normally has the responsibility of monitoring both the fabrication process as well as timely submission of document deliverables. Â
For example, expeditor shall chase up any outstanding documents over due from supplier when flagged off by document controller as well as any outstanding document overdue for approval.
Such expediting would help debottleneck any potential delay and guarantees on time delivery of the equipment.Â
It is a good practice to invite quality engineers from supplier’s side as well as the client’s end at this point to discuss the major quality documents (quality plan, ITP) in preparation for Pre-Production Meeting (PPM), also called Pre Inspection Meeting (P I M).
It is also advisable that document controllers from both parties attend the Kick off meeting to bottom out any possible misunderstanding about document numbering, document submission method, how to incorporate comments and revving up, turnaround time, weekly reporting of document status; flagging off outstanding documents, etc.
Any outstanding issues remaining from the Kick off meeting shall be transferred to the supplier weekly meeting agenda for an orderly and timely closure. The weekly supplier meeting is normally held via telecom.
