One way to simplify your management system is to reduce the number of super-detailed text-based procedures. Once they are in place, you might be temped to audit simply to see if everyone’s following them. This causes two problems. The first problem is that the ‘follow the procedures or else’ message creates a culture of fear. […]
Give your employees credit for having a brain Read More »
It’s all about the risk, these days, and the better we manage it, the better off we are, period! The new Standard calls for it, yes, but it’s just good business practice to assess where the potholes are in our workflow and steer clear of them. Every hour of proactive planning will save 10 hours
…if you choose ‘Operator error’ as the cause of your latest non-conformance. When Ishikawa introduced the world to his ‘Fishbone’ for doing root cause analysis, his research showed that employees in organizations make errors, of course, but only about 6% of the time. The other 94% of the time, the error is caused by a
You’ll be right 6% of the time… Read More »
Getting value out of Internal Audits is a constant challenge. Many of our clients found it helpful to change the focus of their audits from ‘Are people following procedures?’ to ‘Find ways to improve our system’. By getting the focus off of ‘Is everyone following our procedures?’ onto ‘Improvement’ two things happen. First, it is
Stop looking for non-conformances! Read More »
Have you ever heard someone say, after a non-conformance has been raised, “Who screwed up?”. The result? Everyone heads for the hills and tries to find someone to blame. People get defensive and the cause of the problem gets buried in accusations. Improvement? Not likely. Prevent it from happening again? A long-shot at best. If
Just Change ONE Question! Read More »
Seven changes you may not have noticed in this revision of ISO 9001… One of the exercises we use in our Auditor Training is ‘Where’s Waldo?’ Participants look through the new version of ISO 9001 and try to spot where the Standard has changed. These will be part of your ‘how to..’ information so you know
All you need to know…Operations – Clause 8 of ISO 9001:2015 Read More »
ISO 9001:2015 Clause 8 – Operation In a nutshell, this section covers how we meet customer (and interested parties) needs and expectations. And remember to assess expectations within your own context and the context of your interested parties. In the PDCA fashion, this section starts with a requirement to ‘…meet requirements for provision of products and
