Supplier Escape To Alternate Source skill

Supplier-Caused Escape to Alternate Source

Chain 5. ncr-writeup → root-cause-capa → supplier-quote-request.

The plugin's cross-area proof point. A quality finding automatically starting a sourcing action essentially never happens today, because quality and purchasing live in different systems and different departments. That handoff is the whole point of this chain.

If a part has exactly one qualified supplier and that supplier has a quality problem, production stops. Sourcing an alternate is insurance, and the value is in starting early: qualifying one takes weeks to months and nothing here shortens that.

Quick start

→ A nonconformance traced to purchased material starts it
→ Root cause established against the SUPPLIER, not the process
→ Gate 1: a supplier-caused determination is a commercial claim. It needs an owner
→ Corrective action recorded
→ Build the alternate-source RFQ. Response format forces comparable bids
→ Gate 2: nothing outbound without release
→ THREE timestamps, not two. The middle one cannot be reconstructed later

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Inputs

Input	Source	Form
The nonconformance	Inspector notes, an inspection export, a customer complaint	Conversation, M365, pasted
Drawing and specification	M365 document library	PDF
Everything else	Whatever the three member skills read	See each skill

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The four steps

1. A nonconformance traced to purchased material starts it. ncr-writeup writes it against its requirement, scopes the suspect quantity, and places every part across the five containment locations. Where containment finds parts at or past a customer, the escape notification drafts automatically against its contractual clock.

2. Root cause is established against the supplier rather than the process, through root-cause-capa. Lot clustering is the signal that points here: do the failures group by material lot rather than by shift, operator or machine?

Gate 1 — a supplier-caused determination is a commercially significant claim. It says a named vendor caused a defect and it starts a search for an alternate source. It needs a human owner.

3. Corrective action is recorded — the 8D, with D7 addressing the system-level change.

4. Build the RFQ package for an alternate source through supplier-quote-request: the drawing and specification at the verified current revision, the demand picture, the quality clauses, the commercial terms, and a response schedule that forces comparable bids.

Gate 2 — nothing goes outbound until a person releases it.

The chain ends at release; the sourcing event does not. After it, supplier-quote-request carries the event on: one email draft per supplier for the buyer to send, response tracking and chases, the returned bids read into one shape and compared, and a recommendation. The buyer decides, and the skill records who and when. Nothing there is a third gate of this chain.

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Approval gates

Gate	Where	What it protects
1	After step 2	The supplier-caused determination has a named human owner before it acts
2	Before step 4 sends	Nothing reaches a supplier unreleased

The flag carries its own approval_state, and supplier-quote-request checks the gate rather than assuming the flag's existence implies it. An unapproved flag is reported as a finding that needs an owner, not acted on.

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Three timestamps, not two

The chain's headline metric is time from escape to alternate-source RFQ issued, and it cannot be owned by one skill: root cause analysis sits in the middle of that window and can take days or weeks. So it is measured in two segments, which needs three stamps.

Stamp	Written by	On
escape_detected_at	ncr-writeup, when containment first places parts at or past a customer	ncr.md
determination_made_at	root-cause-capa, when the flag is raised	supplier-caused-flag.md
rfq_issued_at	supplier-quote-request, when the package goes out	Its own sourcing record

The middle one is the one that gets dropped, and the only one that cannot be reconstructed afterwards. The chain's output says so beside the stamp, every run: "determination_made_at — the middle of the three; this cannot be reconstructed afterwards." A stamp with no such line is the one a later reader assumes could be backfilled. Without it the two segments collapse into a single number, and the second segment — the dead time this chain actually eliminates — disappears behind an investigation that legitimately takes weeks.

Keeping it segmented is what makes the improvement legible. Cutting the handoff from two weeks to two days shows up even while the investigation still takes a week. One blended figure would hide which half moved.

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Output

Every document this skill produces is printed in the reply, in full. Saving a copy to a file as well is fine, as Word or Excel per ../../shared/replies.md, never .txt; a file instead of the reply is not. The person reads the reply, and every delimited block and outbound check lives in it — a document only on disk has been neither seen nor checked. A record handed to another skill is saved and summarised, never pasted as raw YAML; memory blocks are written where the plant's memory lives; and the name on an approval is asked, never taken from the account. All three per ../../shared/replies.md.

Two pages from one run, with different audiences:

Quality takes the corrective action record — the NCR, the containment plan, the 8D. Supply Chain takes the supplier signal and the sourcing package — the RFQ, the missing-items list, the candidate suppliers with any single-source risk flagged. They are separate artifacts, not one page with two sections. Read ../../shared/command-center.md.

The Quality side is the Quality Register. The NCR and 8D steps of this chain are ncr-writeup and root-cause-capa, and each writes its row and updates the site's register dashboard per ../../shared/live-dashboard.md — including the supplier-caused flag. This chain adds no third write. The Supply Chain page stays a page offered in the conversation, never part of the register.

Plus the escape notification draft where parts reached a customer, and the cover email per supplier.

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Edge cases and failure modes

• The drawing revision in the library disagrees with the ERP — hard stop at step 4. Sending the wrong revision is the classic expensive error this exists to prevent.
• ITAR or export-controlled data — blocking gate before assembly, not before sending.
• Only one qualified supplier exists — flag it loudly. That is the finding, and it is usually more urgent than the package it appeared in.
• The flag arrives unapproved — block. Report it as needing an owner.
• Evidence points at the supplier but the leading candidate is something else — the flag carries is_leading_candidate and competing_candidates for exactly this. Proceed as an exploratory search and label it as one.

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Degradation

Not available	What happens
The standard quality clause set	List the clauses found on the current part record and flag the set as unverified
No drawing exists (a commodity or catalog item)	Switch to a specification-based request rather than blocking
The ERP (NetSuite or Infor M3)	Demand picture and vendor list come from documents or are asked for, and the package says which
The quality document library	Recurrence reports "no searchable history available" rather than silence

Check the freshness of the usage and demand exports before quoting a volume to a supplier. A stale export understates demand, and a supplier priced against the wrong annual volume returns a bid nobody can use. State the window each figure came from.

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Chain position

This is Chain 5 itself. Members: ncr-writeup, root-cause-capa, supplier-quote-request.

Metric. Escape response time, owned by ncr-writeup. Time from escape to alternate-source RFQ issued, owned in two segments: detection and investigation by ncr-writeup and root-cause-capa, the sourcing handoff by supplier-quote-request.

What this chain does not move: requalification lead time. Qualifying an alternate takes as long as sample parts, first article inspection and PPAP take. What it compresses is the dead time before anyone starts.

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Reference files

File	Load when
../ncr-writeup/SKILL.md	Step 1, and the escape clock
../root-cause-capa/SKILL.md	Steps 2 and 3
../supplier-quote-request/SKILL.md	Step 4, and both hard stops
../../shared/contracts/supplier-caused-flag.md	The only cross-area handoff in the plugin
../../shared/command-center.md	The two pages, and why neither is a write