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- Receiving inspection, a failed policy.
The implementation of a quality management system such as ISO 9001 requires consideration of virtually every aspect of an organisation's structure and working practices. Included are the policies and practices associated with the procurement of product and other supplies from external vendors.
Date of Article: 11Jun2009
Category: Business - General
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- Time wasting at meetings.
I recently attended a series of meetings during an introduction to a new client's business. Without exception these meetings were a total waste of time, in that nothing was achieved. Individuals on the 'calling list' were absent, while others came late or left early. It was common for actions outstanding from the previous meeting to remain unaddressed, and nobody seemed particularly concerned over this.
Date of Article: 09Jun2009
Category: Business - General
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- Destructive auditing.
When I first entered the management system audit arena, it was common practice to measure auditor skills by the number of Non-Conformance reports they managed to raise. As an unwilling newcomer I found this a disturbing feature of a business I didn't want to be in, but interestingly my efforts to extradite myself from the audit function led to a change in the responses I got from auditees.
Date of Article: 04Jun2009
Category: Business - General
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- Kickstart service improvement.
Much of the business our organisation conducts is focussed on the product generation aspects of our clients business. For a manufacturer this means the shop floor activities where parts are assembled in a sequence to produce a saleable product.
Date of Article: 02Jun2009
Category: Business - General
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- Environmental and quality management synergy.
In this time of reduced business expenditure there is a marked reduction in the willingness of companies to embark on new ventures, such as the implementation of ISO management systems. What is in evidence is a renewed drive to embrace policies and strategies that have customer appeal. For us [link] new business has come from the need for organisations to be concerned with environmental issues, and ISO14001 has become a focus of attention.
Date of Article: 28May2009
Category: Business - General
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- ISO Certification or Business Management?
The concept that an ISO standard registration is an indication of a well organised and managed company is well established in the minds of business managers, despite the evidence to the contrary and the logic that would deny this generalization. In reality for many the certification - because you seldom find ISO implementation that is not accompanied by a certificate - has become an alternative to rational management practice.
Date of Article: 25May2009
Category: Business - General
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- Improvement objectives - a simple solution
With the publication of ISO9001:2008 auditors will be re-invigorated in their examination of management systems offered for audit and registration, although the actual changes introduced by the amended standard are minimal. Focus is almost certain to be on the improvement clauses of the standard, and the setting of objectives and performance measurement.
Date of Article: 21May2009
Category: Business - General
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- Root cause identification.
Whenever quality professionals gather to discuss quality management issues, sooner or later the issue of 'root cause' becomes the topic. There seems to be a well held view that if you work hard enough, or maybe long enough, eventually the 'root cause' of your problem will be found. Inbuilt in this belief is the presumption that root cause is the key to proper corrective action, and that it is an absolute fact of life. But is it?
Date of Article: 19May2009
Category: Business - General
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- Who owns the internal ISO audit?
What a strange question you might respond, but is it? Assuming we are considering a typical organisation, where audits are scheduled, conducted and reported in a more or less structured manner, probably because of a mandatory requirement to conduct the audit, the question becomes more valid as we examine audit operations.
Date of Article: 31Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- Management by Results, a failed strategy
One of the features of the ISO9001 standard is the requirement to monitor and measure process performance (Section 8). External auditors tend to simply verify the existence of such measurements and move on, while the attitude of internal auditors tends towards indifference. This article attempts to discuss the value of such measurement, and the pitfalls of using these measurements as a basis for managing the business.
Date of Article: 30Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- FMEA - What is it?
FMEA - Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is a technique - a systematic method - of identifying and preventing product and process problems. In ISO9001 terms it is a true 'Prevention' tool, it is a Risk Assessment.
Date of Article: 28Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- Your auditor, is he right for the job?
To achieve any level of accreditation, in any discipline requires the applicant to undergo a level of training and experience that will fit them to carry on their profession with minimal risk to their clients. So, for example, a doctor must have specialist undergraduate training, followed by post graduate training and experience prior to achieving any registered status and being allowed to practice on the population at large.
Date of Article: 24Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- Acceptance Sampling.
For much of the past hundred years it has been common practice within manufacturing to employ sampling techniques to determine the acceptability of product. The purpose of this sampling is to permit an assessment of specified features of a product without the cost - in time or money - of examining every item in a consignment or batch.
Date of Article: 22Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9001 and Management review
In the context of ISO9001 Management Review has a particular connotation that is continued into the latest 2008 variant of the standard. It specifically relates to the review of management systems performance and the opportunities for developing further improvement. But this review is just one of several review requirements documented in the standard, with further review activities being a natural part of the business management process.
Date of Article: 20Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9000 - Quality Management and economic downturn
You may have read the title of this article as being relevant to the introduction of the new ISO 900 standard [ISO9001:2008], whereas the intention is to try to protect the integrity of audit and quality management in a time of economic downturn.
Date of Article: 17Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- IS09001:2008 - More than an amended standard?
As predicted a new iS09001 Standard has been finalized and is now available. Rather like its predecessor it arrived in time-just! Throughout the development we have been assured that the document would not contain major revisions, just a collection of "amendments or clarifications'.
Date of Article: 15Jan2009
Category: Reference & Education
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- Quality Management and Quality Costs
In any discussion of quality management systems and practice, there eventually arises the question of 'quality costs'. It is distinctly passé to be outside such a conversation, as everyone is expected to have a view, and to be involved in the measurement of such costs.
Date of Article: 18Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9000: Document Control
Any external audit of an organisation will eventually address the issue of Document Control. Few aspects of system conformity cause such difficulty as this to both auditor and auditee. Much of the problem arises from the tendency to consider documents in the control mechanism rather than the information they contain.
Date of Article: 15Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9000: Internal Audit Myths
Internal audit has been a requirement of ISO9001 since its inception, and was inherited from the line of standards that preceded the ISO document. For many organisations internal audit is seen simply as a requirement, something to be undertaken, a cost of doing business. For those involved with the delivery of the internal audit process, a series of myths have been generated which over time change their order of importance, or emphasis.
Date of Article: 12Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- Quality Improvement
One doesn't have to be around for more than a decade or so to witness the apparent rise and fall of several management schemes (some say fads) intended to change the world, or at least the confined world of the operation in which you function.
Date of Article: 07Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems
Those of us closely involved with management system development and improvement are frequently consulted on the relative merits of separate rather than integrated systems for these two standards - and of course other combinations.
Date of Article: 03Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- Process Mapping and the Route to Improvement
Defining and understanding business processes is the key to improvement of these processes and hence to improving business performance - whatever the nature of the business. Process mapping is essential to this understanding, and in every business the time spent on this mapping task will demonstrate that few if any members of the organisation fully understand the operation of their business as it is being conducted.
Date of Article: 01Nov2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- Performance Measurement
The often repeated requirement to improve business performance and to achieve not simply an improvement but continual improvement, pre-supposes that some mechanism or method exists to actually measure performance, since measurement is a pre-requisite to control and improvement.
Date of Article: 27Oct2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9000: Procedures
Developing and improving a management system such as that defined by ISO9001 is often an onerous task simply because the original ground work - defining and establishing the system, was poorly managed.
Date of Article: 22Oct2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO9001 - Eliminating the Quality Department
Wherever the ISO9001 Standard is discussed, the one certain item will be that of Improvement. Most often considered is the Continual Improvement requirement of the ISO Standard (section 8) or possible improvements to the Standard itself. This latter particularly at the present time as we await the publication of ISO9001:2008.
Date of Article: 06Jun2008
Category: Business - General
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- Quality improvement - Six Sigma vs. Zero Defects
Following the development of a management system for Quality - e.g. ISO9001' is the need to maintain and improve the performance of such a system. ISO 9001 in its current form requires the organisation to continually improve, and for auditors and managers alike this improvement requirement has been difficult to define and therefore to demonstrate.
Date of Article: 03Jun2008
Category: Reference & Education
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- ISO 14001 and Environmental Management
There is an increasing emphasis on the management of environmental factors affecting our personal lives, our community and the world at large. As individuals, it is difficult to see how our contribution can have any effect on the grand scheme of things, but equally, any large scale change comes about as a consequence of numerous small changes.
Date of Article: 30May2008
Category: Business - General
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- ISO9001 & Contract Review
In an attempt to define an effective set of management processes, ISO 9001:2000 has a section devoted to the management of the contract process. Earlier versions of the Standard (e.g. ISO9001:1994) defined this activity as Contract Review, a clear indication of its nature and purpose. ISO 9001:2000 has located it in a section (7.2.2) "Review of requirements related to the product".
Date of Article: 28May2008
Category: Business - General
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- ISO9001 & Risk Management
In every human endeavour there is an element of risk; personal, project or financial, or a combination of them all. The task of the responsible individual is to identify the risk and act accordingly. We all do these 'risky' things, almost daily, aware that we are taking a risk. Rather than avoiding risk we become adept at identifying it and having a strategy for dealing with it if the risk materialises.
Date of Article: 22May2008
Category: Business - General
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- Continual Improvement
A common perception of the requirement 'continual improvement' contained within the ISO9001 Standard (8.5.1) is that in some way it relates to an improvement of product or service. Some more serious thought might reveal this to be a misinterpretation, as the document is not a product or service specification, but a system for controlling the quality of the product or service through the output
Date of Article: 18May2008
Category: Business - General
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- ISO9001 Internal Audit
This ISO Standard contains an element (8) intended to encompass a range of features which together support a mechanism to improve the performance of the management system. Internal audit forms part of this set, but only a part, yet is probably the only element readily recognisable to the average person. Internal audit is significant, not because of the results it delivers ...
Date of Article: 14May2008
Category: Business - General
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- ISO 9001 & Quality Management
With the proliferation of companies claiming to conform to the requirements of this international Standard, we might well come to believe that product and service quality has reached its peak and every customer is satisfied with the performance of their ISO9000 registered supplier. On the other hand we could have simply misunderstood the purpose of this Standard and the registration process.
Date of Article: 13May2008
Category: Business - General
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