Ever since the first non-conformance was written, we’ve been looking for ways to find the cause, do a corrective action and bid farewell to the profit sucking problem. It’s been a problem closing out non-conformances since I’ve been associated with ISO – 1992. All the studies of ‘Top non-conformances’ from Registrars showed closeouts as the …
Why Do A Root Cause Analysis – What’s In It For Me? Read More »
When making your non-conformance (problem) statement, be sure to choose words that will get the response that you’re looking for. Stating a non-conformance as, “The operator did not follow the procedure” will set the root cause analysis back 30 years. Statements that identify a person as the problem will only end in disaster. Statements like …
ISO Standards, for the most part have moved to ‘Risk-based thinking’ as one of their themes. It makes complete sense to include this as part of the fabric of our organizations in order to reduce the chaos of unexpected events, as least the ones we can control. ISO 31000:2018 has some ideas that will help …
ISO 10004 has some fine ideas to get your customer satisfaction activities organized. As we’re bombarded more and more with surveys, suffering from survey fatigue to the point where we’re saying ‘Why bother?’ we still need to get some information to continue our improvement journey. The conceptual framework looks like this: It’s the Input -> …
Internal Auditing has been around since before dirt. Some organizations really do a great job and find improvements – this earns a return the investment. Others do it to make the Registrar happy and could do without the grief. This approach ends up costing them money and is a drain on resources. To supercharge your …
ISO Clause 10 requires Improvement – in fact, the word improvement appears 24 times in ISO 9001. And we all know that we have to tweak things continually to stay just a bit ahead of the competition. If we’re not getting better, it’s going to feel as if we’re falling behind. Non-conformances are a great …
This is the ‘Rubber Hits the Road’ clause, especially for ISO 9001. The EMS and OHS standards both include the ‘Emergency and Preparedness’ in this section – Operations. By using a flowchart to illustrate your workflow you’ll be able to meet the requirements of 4.4.1 a) and b) – show what the processes are, inputs …
Clause 6.2 requires that we set measurable objectives. This helps motivate people – just strap a FitBit to someone’s wrist and watch what happens! Try SMART targets to make things clear to your folks: Specific Measurable Attainable (or Action-oriented) Relevant Time Limited Next, don’t set your targets until you know what your processes are capable …
Last Post until January 8th, 2020!! ISO 10004 has some ideas for us on how to go about getting a handle on this elusive number. First, there’s a ‘concept’ diagram – a great place to start: By getting a handle on customers’ expectations, you’ll be able to tell more about how well you’ve satisfied them. …
The challenge of determining Customer Satisfaction continues. With all the available technology, we haven’t made much headway, really. Requirements = Needs + Expectations Needs are outlined in the ‘contract’ with your clients, and determined in Clause 8.2. But what about ‘expectations’? These are hard to nail down, but at the very least, make sure you’re …
