I appreciate your suggestions and we have proceeded in the exact same way in which you have described below. Many companies are well versed in root cause identification and we believe our supplier has the skills to do this analysis. We asked them very specific questions about their production process. They have continually responded by saying nothing was different or out of the ordinary with their process. Identically, we have conducted a very thorough analysis of our own process and I can tell you there is nothing that jumps out as being out of the ordinary.
In a ideal world, we would be able to identify the root cause for every problem that happens. Realistically, however, this many times is not achievable. I know this is not what your client wants to hear. However, in this case, we are just not able to determine the root cause of the problem. Please accept my apologies for this.
So for now we are left with corrective action. I suggest we move forward with the corrective action SEP has proposed. In addition, we are going to work with the supplier to set a heat seal strength requirement for their LLDPE and make sure this is included on their COA in the future.