In ISO9001:2008 we had Management Responsibility, in ISO9001:2015 however we have Leadership as a clause, surely, it's just a simple name change, branding if you like. Actually no, it's quite a deliberate distinction they have made in the standard and it's aimed at engaging more of the company. Previously a company would hire a Quality Manager and ...

What is your vision for your company? Can you talk about it with people in a way they will understand? Will it inspire people in a way that they will want/need to get involved and to help with it? Or will it be a statement on a bit of paper that is framed in your entrance hallway or posters in your canteen that everyone looks at the first time, sha...

Volume is the solution, volume will make you more productive, volume will reduce costs. That's the goal, reduce costs and send more money to the profit line. The more you can spread your set up costs over a larger run (like spreading jam on toast) the cheaper things will be and the more profit you will make. Problem solved.. just make more! Except,...

ISO9001:2015 Clause 4.3 is all about the scope of your Quality Management System, of what parts of your organisation will be included within your Quality Management System, in other words what are the boundaries of the Quality System. By completing ISO9001:2015 Clauses 4.1(Context of the Organisation) , Clause 4.2(Interested parties) ...

ISO 9001:2015 Clause 4.4 is an interesting one, it says that you shall establish, implement, maintain and continually improve a quality management system. It says you should  include the processes needed & their interactions as well, its your job to determine the processes that are needed to meet the standard. It doesn't say anywhere ...

You hear the advice from a huge number of people, hit the big things 1st, focus on the biggest bang for the buck, don't sweat the small stuff. Yet the thing that people forget, it's all small stuff, until it's not! Big stuff starts out as small stuff, then it grows, it feeds waste or lack of accountability or poor company culture and it grows then ...

When you think about a company mission statement what springs to mind? A bunch of buzzwords that create a nondescript marketing pitch that no one really understands or pays much attention to right? If people do pay attention, it's only to laugh at them. Sometimes companies incorrectly toss in a bit about it's long term future as well just for good ...

Clause 4.1 of the ISO9001:2015 standard is a new and can cause a fair bit of confusion, hand wringing and general bewilderment for people, I know when I first read it I thought WHAT THE!? but then I read it again (and again) and did some research and thought, actually I see what they are doing here, that's pretty helpful, I can see how any organisation would benefit from it so here's my take on it, hopefully it helps.

Before we start I want to point I'm not going to be talking about in-depth project management or project office systems, I'm not talking about slippage, work breakdown structures or Gant charts or  Scrum sessions or anything like that. What I am talking about is actually controlling what projects happen in your organisation and why that's...

Clause 4 if the ISO9001:2015 standard is broken into 4 sections in a bid to make it cleared, for the user which are: 4.1 Understanding the Organisation & its Context4.2 Understanding the needs & expectations of interested parties4.3 Determining the scope of the quality management system4.4 quality management system & it's processes Now,...

Can we have a quick chat about your company Purpose? Great, so just tell me what it is … At this point in the conversation one of a few things typically happen:   The individual starts to trip over their words and gives a long string of jargon which doesn't really mean much, and I possibly nod off halfway through.The individual reaches for the...

In our last post we pointed out that skipping the initial sections of the ISO9000 standard is dumb, it's like walking into the movies after the first 30 minutes and hoping you know what's going on so if you haven't read our post on the initial clauses pop back there and have a read, we'll wait.    ISO9000 and The Initial Clauses (the one'...

So you have done the hard work, you have figured out what your real Core values are, you are clear on your permission to play values and you also have a couple of aspirational values that you are going to build a plan to embed these into your organisation. You are all set, let's get the posters made & framed! Frame them, Don't Frame them.. Not ...

When you go see a movie you don't turn up a third of the way through because you know that part is pointless or skip the first 3 or 4 chapters of your book because, well the interesting stuff is always in the middle. That 1st part is the critical opening act, it's where the whole story, the basis for everything is set up, it's critical to the end o...

In our previous post on Core Values, we outlined Permission to Play Values, those values that must be present in someone before you even let them in a organisation. There are some obvious ones here, Honesty and Integrity for example but there may be other ones that your organisation decide to add that are specific to your business or industry and t...

When I talk with people about their quality system or ISO9000 the one bit they all tell me is that they have lots of Non Conformances getting captured (which is good) or that they have just had an audit and passed with no issues (which is not so good!). What I tend to pick up though is that Non Conformances are seen as a bad thing, someti...

It's been a busy time of late between some increased travel while working with some great clients in Auckland, plus touching base with some in Christchurch, working with some really interesting individuals as part of the LinkedIn Mentoring program, preparing for our workshop next week on Understanding & Improving The Customer Experience and of ...

A lot of the time when you ask companies about their ISO9000 compliance they are ever so eager to show you their quality statistics, the Xbar charts and a multitude of other charts, talk about their outgoing and incoming quality checks and of course customer returns levels. All of which is great, but that's only a part of ISO9000 and some would arg...