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 [...]

“9001 – The Collection” if you want to learn cool stuff in a hurry

Recognising that businesses need information as quickly as possible in order to implement it and gain benefits,  I am now offering the full set of ISO 9001 Training Guide videos under the banner “9001 – The Collection”.  Rather than work through the free series each fortnight for six months you can be in total control [...]

It doesn’t say you have to use Flowcharts – does it?

The use of flowcharts causes much discussion, with everyone having an opinion as to the best style and structure. However, what’s all the fuss about when they are not even mandated as part of a QMS?  9001 states that the QMS can be recorded on any format so why not carry on doing what we [...]

ISO 9001 Training Guides videos start to make a difference

It is pleasing to hear that these guides are actually starting to make a difference to my subscribers with one recently responding: “So far you have already helped me with our supplier quality management and prompted me to add audit corrective actions onto the database I use for product non-conformances so I can review them [...]

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 [...]

Quality Manual at the beginning – or the end?

Where do you put the manual when you are creating a quality management system? Some start with it so that it maps out what procedures and work instructions or standard operating procedures need to be written. Others leave it till the end so they can capture all that has been created in the second and [...]

Where’s your basic business information please?

When putting together a quality system it goes without saying that you will need to build in numerous measures relating to various processes around the business. Now most of these will often be new to a site so you need to carefully explain what is required and why. However you enter into this phase almost [...]

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 [...]

ISO 9001 Training Guides launched

Companies who install quality management systems are often left to their own devises once the system is installed. To me this is the time when they need the practical support so they get their house in order before the audit. Having worked with many sites to put a system in, I have been very staggered [...]

Now where were we . . . .

The last twelve months have flown by and been really busy – a defining period for our business. So much so that this idea of a blog just got lost in the ‘noise’ I guess – tell me I’m not the only one! Anyway as we enter our seventh year we are determined to get [...]