Thursday, April 8, 2010

Step by Step: Leading your company to Successful ISO 9001:2008 Registration

Step by Step: Leading your company to Successful ISO 9001:2008 Registration

1. ISO 9000 Introduction, a Process approach.

2. Gap Analysis: Schedule the Gap Analysis, Conduction and ISO 9001 Gap Analysis.

3. Prepare a Project Plan: The Team approach, Steering Team, Task Teams.

4. Train employees on ISO 9001: Mamagement Overview, Employee awareness, Keeping them informed.

5. Document your system: How much Documentation do you need, Importance of Documentation control

6. Implement the QMS in your Organization:Training on new procedures, Training of internal auditors.

7. Audit your QMS: Train internal Auditors, Conduct Internal Audits.

8. ISO 9001:2008 Registration Audit: Selecting a Registrar and then go ahead with registration.


Process Approach In ISO 9001 Standards

The process approach was introduced into ISO 9001 with the year 2000 version of the standards.

Prior versions used an element approach. The document Guidance on the concept and use of the process approach for management systems describes to process approach and offers an implementation paradigm.

2.4. Verify the process and its activities against its planned objectives
3. Implementation and measurement of the process
4. Analysis of the process
5. Corrective action and improvement of the process Implementation
This document explains the process used to evaluate changes to the 2008 version. In particular, it explains the revision process and illustrates the impact vs. benefit analysis used to evaluate potential changes.
In addition to the guidance documents, ISO maintains a web site with “official interpretations” of

approach was introduced into ISO 9001 with the year 2000 version of the standards.
Prior versions used an element approach. The document Guidance on the concept and use of the process approach for managementsystems describes to process approach and offers an implementation paradigm.
1. Identification of processes of the organization
1.1. Define the purpose of the organization
1.2. Define the policies and objectives of the organization
1.3. Determine the processes in the organization
1.4. Determine the sequence of the processes
1.5. Define process ownership
1.6. Define process documentation
2. Planning of a process
2.1. Define the activities within the process
2.2. Define the monitoring and measurement requirements
2.3. Define the resources needed

ISO 9001. Currently, these interpretations only include ISO 9001:2000, but, because the changes to the 2008 version were limited, they are valuable.
Consider a common question. An organization needs a documented procedure for preventive action (8.5.3), and must keep records of the results of preventive action (8.5.3.d). One of the interpretation requests asks, “Does sub-clause 8.5.3 a) require organizations to demonstrate, with objective evidence in the form of records, that they have undertaken actions to determine the existence of ‘potential nonconformities and their causes’?” The answer is “No”.
Auditing Practices
The ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group maintains a website9 with guidance and information on auditing ISO 9001 quality management systems. It is an informal group of
quality management system (QMS) experts, auditors, and practitioners drawn from the ISO Technical Committee 176 Quality Management and Quality Assurance(ISO/TC 176) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).
The website, primarily aimed at QMS auditors, consultants, and quality practitioners, is an online source of papers and presentations on auditing a QMS and reflect the process based approach.
The website contains almost forty guidance documents with practical advice ranging from “How to audit top management processes” to “The role and value of the audit checklist”.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

What is ISO 9000 Standards?

What is ISO 9000 Standards?
ISO 9000 is a set of interrelated ideas, principles and rules and could therefore be considered a system in the same way that we refer to the metric system or the imperial system of measurement. ISO 9000 is both an international standard and until year 2008, was a family of some 20 international standards. As a standard, ISO 9000 was divided into 4 parts with part 1 providing guidelines on the selection and use of the other standards in the family. The family of standards included requirements for quality assurance and guidelines on quality management. Some might argue that none of these are in fact standards in the sense of being quantifiable. The critics argue that the standards are too open to interpretation to be standards anything that produces such a wide variation is surely an incapable process with one of its primary causes being a series of objectives that are not measurable. However, if we take a broader view of standards, any set of rules, rituals, requirements, quantities, targets or behaviours that have been agreed by a group of people could be deemed to be a standard. Therefore by this definition, ISO 9000 is a standard.




Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Family Of ISO 14000 Standards

Family of ISO 14000 include standards as follows:

1. ISO 14001: Environmental management systems—Requirements with guidance for use.

2. ISO 14004: Environmental management systems—General guidelines on principles, systems and support techniques.

3. ISO 14015: Environmental assessment of sites and organizations.

4. ISO 14020: Include series (14020 to 14025) Environmental labels and declarations.

5. ISO 14031: Environmental performance evaluation—Guidelines.

6. ISO 14040: Include series (14040 to 14049), Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, discusses pre-production planning and environment goal setting.

7. ISO 14050: Terms and definitions.

8. ISO 14062: Discusses making improvements to environmental impact goals.

9. ISO 14063: Environmental communication—Guidelines and examples

10. ISO 19011: which specifies one audit protocol for both 14000 and 9000 series standards together.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Identifying and Recording Design Changes In ISO 9001 Standards

Identifying and Recording Design Changes In ISO 9001 Standards

The documentation for design changes in ISO 9001 Standards should comprise the change proposal, the results of the evaluation, the instructions for change and traceability in the changed documents to the source and nature of the change. You will therefore need:
- A Change Request form which contains the reason for change and the
results of the evaluation – this is used to initiate the change and obtain
approval before being implemented.
- A Change Notice that provides instructions defining what has to be changed this is issued following approval of the change as instructions to the owners of the various documents that are affected by the change.
- A Change Record that describes what has been changed – this usually forms part of the document that has been changed and can be either in the form of a box at the side of the sheet (as with drawings) or in the form of a table on a separate sheet (as with specifications).
Where the evaluation of the change requires further design work and possibly experimentation and testing, the results for such activities should be documented to form part of the change documentation.
At each design review a design baseline should be established which identifies the design documentation that has been approved. The baseline
should be recorded and change control procedures employed to deal with any changes. These change procedures should provide a means for formally
requesting or proposing changes to the design. For complex designs you may prefer to separate proposals from instructions and have one form for proposing design changes and another form for promulgating design changes after approval. You will need a central registry to collect all proposed changes and provide a means for screening those that are not suitable to go before the review board, (either because they duplicate proposals already made or because they may not satisfy certain acceptance criteria which you have prescribed). On receipt, the change proposals should be identified with a unique number that can be used on all related documentation that is subsequently produced. The change proposal needs to:
- Identify the product of which the design is to be changed
- State the nature of the proposed change identify the principal requirements, specifications, drawings or other design documents which are affected by the change
- State the reasons for the change either directly or by reference to failure
reports, nonconformity reports, customer requests or other sources
- Provide for the results of the evaluation, review and decision to be
recorded