(ISO) Quality Manual Chat

No, it is not a requirement of ISO9001:2000 to measure top management’s commitment to the quality system. It would be kind of interesting if such a measurement was required, tho. Maybe it would weed out those company’s who are really interested in having the nice plaque on the wall, but not so interested in actually improving quality.

This is a topic that quality people often discuss, and I do find it interesting. Although, really, there’s not a lot you can really do if your company’s owner isn’t interested in quality.

One measurement might be something like this: How often does your company owner/president look at sales figures versus how often he/she looks at quality performance? Does company management EVER look at quality performance outside of your annual Management Review meeting? Ever?? I’ve known several who never did. Actually, now that I think about it, I can’t think of one who ever actively wanted to know how the company’s quality performance was doing. All of them only begrudgingly participated in Management Review meetings, at my insistence.

Have you ever met a company owner/president who was actually interested in quality performance? Do you think there are many out there who are? I’d guess they’re in a very small minority. What do you think?

Do you use external documents? External documents are those generated and (usually) updated by organizations outside your company. Documents such as government standards, MIL-SPEC documents, Federal Aviation Regulations, drawings created by your customers or vendors, etc. are considered external documents. Chances are your organization is not responsible for, or allowed to, modify external documents.

If you don’t want to control external documents, you must specifically state in your quality manual, and on the documents themselves, that they are “For Reference Only” and are not updated.

External documents that you depend on, and are updated occasionally, must be controlled in your quality management system. Revision is usually controlled by the publisher. You are responsible to ensure that you have a means to receive updates from the publisher (such as a current subscription) and that you periodically check to make sure that you have the latest revisions.

As part of your document control, you must also devise a way to withdraw the obsolete documents and prevent their accidental use, and also issue the new updated documents to the necessary personnel in your organization. Whatever process you use to make sure you have the latest revisions, you must document this in your quality manual.

A potential client once told me that a previous auditor recommended the client improve his vendor evaluation process. The client’s vendor evaluations only pertained to product vendors, not to services such as the building cleaning service, electrical contractor, and even the ISO auditor who provided the service.

I’ve also heard a few others in the ISO world proclaim that it would be a good thing to include service providers in the vendor evaluation process. However I don’t agree with this. Some ISO auditors and consultants seem to think that business people have all the time in the world to work on little details such as formal evaluation of service vendors. Personally I believe that section 7.4.1 applies to products and services that you use in goods or services that you sell to your customers, not necessarily vendors you use to maintian your building, or other vendors where YOU are the final customer.

While it sure would be nice to have the time and energy to perform a formal vendor evaluation on such vendors, I believe most business owners and employees would much rather spend their time trying to make their company profitable.

I would be interested to hear the justification from someone who feels otherwise.

Tim

If you’re considering writing an ISO9001:2000 quality manual for your organization, it’s good to include a section on “Customer Focus”. ISO is all about satisfying your customer. No matter what kind of organization you have, in one way or another there is some sort of “customer” that you want to satisfy.

A necessary part of your ISO quality system is to describe how you determine customer requirements.

It may or may not be readily apparent how you determine customer requirements. You might have a formal process, such as hiring a marketing research firm to survey potential customers as to what they are looking for. Automobile manufacturers do this all the time. Or, you might have a less formal process. If you’re a small company developing motorcycle products, you might not have the budget for formal market research. Maybe you talk to motorcycle enthusiasts at races and other gatherings.

Think about how it is that you decide what your customers want, which is, of course, the same as deciding what it is you’re going to supply. Write it down. You may not realize that you already do this process. Simply thinking about it and writing down will give you food for thought about how you might improve this process, increase customer satisfaction, which will lead to increase sales.

Is it necessary for you to include Design and Development in your Quality Management System? Being a huge fan of keeping things as simple as possible, I would encourage you to closely look at your processes and see if you truly must include Design and Development in your quality system.

Look at your product. Do you truly design it, or do you produce items based on customer drawings and specifications? Or are you a sales organization or a distributor, with no manufacturing or design processes?

Don’t let an ISO consultant or anyone else tell you that you should include Design and Development in your QMS, just because they think you should. I’ve met a couple of people in the ISO world who just can’t believe than anyone would want to exclude Design and Development from their quality management system. These people strangely believe that just about any company has some design processes, and therefore should include this in their manual and procedures. Don’t let them bully you into this.