Containment is a fence, not the fix. Open the 8D the same morning, with the complaint number at the top. Cover four places: parts at the customer, parts in transit, finished goods in your building and work in process. Record where each bad part came from, and mark the first clean shipment so the customer can see the break.
It's 9:15, ninety minutes after the email. Before the customer wants a root cause, they want to know one thing: is any more bad product headed their way?
Containment is the answer to that question. It isn't the fix. It's a fence. You build it around every part that could be affected, you check everything inside it, and you prove that what ships next is clean.
Open the 8D now, not later
The 8D report is the corrective action record that will carry this complaint to closure. Open it the same morning, with RMA-031 at the top. The first three steps happen fast:
- D1, the team. Who owns it, and who actually touches the part. Put the person who packs the housings on the team, not just the people who sign the report.
- D2, the problem. Copy the facts from the complaint log: 14 of 200, scratches on the top face, lot 2417. Add what you see yourself once a sample comes back.
- D3, containment. Where the fence goes and what you found inside it.
Where the fence goes
Draw the boundary wider than you think you need. A good containment covers four places:
- Parts at the customer, including what's still in their stock.
- Parts in transit.
- Finished goods in your building.
- Work in process that will become finished goods.
In this case, the plant sorted 400 housings in finished goods and found 11 with the same scratches. All 11 came from totes packed after September 28. The customer let a sort team check the remaining 186 pieces of lot 2417 at their dock. They found 3 more.
That date matters. A pattern like "only parts packed after a certain day" is the first real clue, and you only get it if containment records where each bad part came from.
The clean break
The first shipment after containment needs a mark the customer can see: a label, a dot, a note on the packing slip. That's how they know where suspect material ends and certified material begins. Write the break point into the 8D: which lot, which date, how it's marked.
The mistake to avoid
Calling the sort the fix. A 100% sort catches bad parts. It does nothing to stop the next one from being made. If the 8D stalls after D3, you've paid for inspection forever and fixed nothing. Containment buys time for the root cause. It doesn't replace it.
- Open your oldest open corrective action.
- Check that D3 covers all four places: customer, transit, finished goods and work in process.
- If the clean break point isn't written down, write it today.
Related on ShopFloorOps
The plant, the part and the complaint in this book (RMA-031) are a made-up example. The tool sidebars show ShopFloorOps tools, which I make and sell. Every chapter teaches the step itself, so you can use your own forms.