A short while ago I got the chance to catch up with Craig Thornton from Mango QHSE, of course both being lock-down along with the rest of New Zealand and most of the world it was via a web call.  The subject was one close to my heart, improvements. Specifically how do you uncover that are already hiding within your QHSE system, that are ...

Understanding exactly what you need to do in order to achieve ISO9001:2015 can be a bit of a challenge. Sometimes the language in the standard can be a little, well, unclear. Don't get me wrong the 2015 version of the ISO9001 standard is vastly improved over the previous versions of the standard but unless you are familiar with ISO standards a...

When an organisation makes the decision that they need to achieve the ISO9001:2015 certification there are normally a number of factors that influence the decision, because let's face it, it's not a small decision, it's one that really needs to be considered carefully since you are about to fundamentally change how your organisation functions. The ...

You have done it, the ISO9001:2015 certificate is on the wall and all that hard work of building a Quality Management System that really delivers for your organisation is behind you, so why are we talking about a journey?   Celebrate Firstly, it is important to stop for a moment and celebrate what you and the team have achieved. It says a lot ...

Congratulations, you have got to the point where it is time for the stage 2 audit of your new ISO9001:2015 certification audit of your Quality Management System. You have spent many hours training all of your team on what the requirements are for running the organisation within your new system, people know where to find things, they are updati...

It's finally time, you have done all the hard yards and now it's time to actually get your new ISO9001:2015 system officially certified, so what exactly does that mean and how do you do it, there are a few steps to move through to get to that all important ISO9001:2015 certificate. In this post we will cover the 1st two steps.   Selecting a Ce...

As we have worked through all of the clauses within ISO9001 in this blog series we have highlighted a number of areas where you need a document or need to be keeping a record of things, but to be fair, it may be hard to keep track and to be honest with so many clauses it can be a little overwhelming. It's not unusual for people to believe that abso...

The management review is possibly one of the most useful parts of the entire standard yet it's also one of the most underused! ISO9001:2015 Clause 9.3 is all about the requirements for that management review and the very 1st part 9.3.1 gives us a bit of a general overview of the point of the clause.   General Expectations of the Managemen...

When we talk to people about ISO9001 there are a few things that come up as the reasons not to do it, one is the need to document things, the other is around non-conformance and the final one is always the need for doing internal audits. Typically, I get told we fail enough external audits to know what we need to fix anyway! Or worse – we never fai...

Let's face it if you are working through ISO9001:2015 you already know that you need to monitor, measure, analyse and evaluate your quality management system, we talked about it way back in Clause 4.4 and again in Clause 6.2. You already understand why it's important so why is it here again in ISO9001:2015 Clause 9.1.1? I guess you could look at th...

Unless you are operating in some mystical nirvana the reality is at some point you are going to have rework in your organisation, you have rework because you have a non-conforming output and so ISO9001:2015 has some requirements for you to meet in order to ensure that you control these adequately. The other thing that tends to happen around non-con...

What is the signal within your organisation that your product or service is ready to be handed over to the customer? That is essentially the question that ISO9001:2015 is asking in Clause 8.6 – Release of Products and Services. Previously we have talked about verification and validation of your product or service to ensure that it meets the end use...

Have you ever had one of those days when you are working through something you have done many times before only for someone to say, oh hey we changed how we do that, or we don't use those parts now we changed that? Frustrating isn't it? It's also pretty wasteful as it can create a bunch of rework or worse useless products or services no one wants o...

ISO9001:2015 clause 8.5.5 – Post Delivery Activities is as the name suggests, all about how you support your customers after they get their hands on your products or services. Before going too much further just pause for a second and think about the time when you have bought say a car or a new cell phone and you wanted to follow up support for it, ...

Preservation may sound like an unusual thing to talk about when it comes to ISO9001:2015 but that's exactly what clause 8.5.4 is all about and as is the tendency for this standard it's a small clause, only 20 words in fact, and a short note to give some hints, surely that can't be a big deal then?... well it is and here's why. Clause 8.5.4 is 100% ...