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 »
John Seddon has been promoting Systems Thinking for years – I’ve been following him for nearly 30 years now and I’ve used the Vanguard Method approach to management system design since the early 2000s. A number of Federal Departments in Ottawa still have them in place. This post is based on the last part of
The Process Approach – What’s In It For Me? Read More »
Without doubt, our customers need to be the focus of our efforts. You’ll find that the word ‘customer’ appears 88 times in ISO 9001:2015. Some of the places it appears are in the ‘General’ section, Quality Management Principles, the Process Approach, Scope, and these clauses: 4.2 Needs and Expectations of Interested Parties; 4.3 Scope; 5.1.2
The Customer Communication Crisis! Read More »
John Seddon has been a Systems builder since the 80s. He bases his work on the genius of Taiichi Ohno – The Toyota Production System – Beyond Large-Scale Production. Seddon has been successful adapting Ohno’s TPS approach but using it in services. There’s always a temptation to set targets and try to convince people to
What’s your ‘Purpose’? Read More »
Seth Godin is one of my favourite authors – a great thinker and terrific business person. Even though he’s not ‘ISO’ his thoughts on ‘systems’ fit beautifully. The first mistake we make is the underestimation of the importance of something. Think of the internet. We assume it’s stable and will always work. We don’t really
Two Management System Mistakes We Make Read More »
This is a solid set of steps developed by James P. Womack in his book Lean Thinking. He was into the Lean stream very early and has done some great work. He mentions Taiichi Ohno and The Toyota Production System in his work as well. Womack’s 8 steps to get from ‘Thinking’ to ‘Action’: Overcome inertia
From ‘Thinking’ to ‘Action’ Read More »
You bet we can!! When we integrate 2 or more Standards, the time savings start immediately! It takes some work to combine some of the requirements, but the benefits last for the life of the system. Top Management Benefits Management can literally kill multiple birds with one stone. As we go down the list of
Can We Make Improvements Through Integration? Read More »
John Seddon, Vanguard Consulting, published a book in 2005 called “Freedom from Command and Control”. Definitely worth reading if you’re interested in tapping the vast potential of any workforce. One of his interesting ideas is ‘Learn to see, learn to lead’ and it made complete sense to me. What a leaders learn from looking at
Learn to ‘See’… Learn to ‘Lead’ Read More »
We need to focus on our users when we’re designing and improving our management systems. This may seem obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many times a client will ask, “Will the auditor accept this?”. Of course we want to get certified, but if we are sure of the requirements and decide what we
Whose Management System is it, anyway? Read More »
“What’s in it for me?” is a question everybody asks at one time or another. You’d think ‘What goes around comes around’ would be enough to engage and contribute, but not everyone believes in Karma. So if you feel that employee engagement would help your organization (I can guarantee it will!) and you want to
Employee engagement – WIIFM? Read More »
