Remember, auditors need to be competent not necessarily qualified

So you need to do some internal audits for 9001 – but can you just be ‘competent’ as it states in the standard or is it worth going the whole hog and becoming ‘qualified’?  Certainly those of you who want to make a career of auditing are advised to take those few days away from [...]

How to make your Audit Report a good read

Travelling round a variety of businesses as I do I come across a wide range of, how should I put this, well styles of audits reports I guess.  However, there is still a tendancy for an audit report to be written like a story.  You know paragraph after paragraph with no obvious breaks or sections. [...]

How to check if you are ready for that 9001 audit

I often get asked this as sites get close to bringing in the auditor so I put together this summary of what I would expect to see in relation to the five main paragraphs so it is possible for anyone to gauge if they are ready. How much of the system? The QMS should have [...]

When passing an ISO 9001 audit with ‘flying colours’ flatters to deceive

Over the years there have been many instances when I see sites pin their ‘flying colours’ to the mast after their audit and it makes me wonder because I know for a fact that the site in question has major issues,  For example, the system hasn’t been managed for months; internal audits haven’t been done and customers have [...]

Be clear on the three ‘actions’ in your ISO system

One of the most confusing aspects for management representatives to get their heads round when taking on a quality system has to be the concept of Corrective, Preventative and Preventive action.  As they return weary eyed from their auditor course and laden with notes and forms they have to be clear which one to implement and [...]

Sample ISO 9001 Training Guides released

I have been well pleased with how positive the feedback has been for this series of  Training Guides.  In addition it has been fascinating to hear of the diverse reasons people have had for subscribing in the first place.   With several groups now running the next stage is to make some sample vids available [...]

Mistakes when auditing

I have been getting a bit of auditing done myself around a site or two these past couple of weeks which made the videos on auditing in the first of the series of ISO 9001 Training guides somewhat opportune. After all, I must practice what I preach! With interest growing nicely for the videos I [...]