Your comments on the contents of the attachment please. Any suggestions for improving it will be greatly appreciated

Welcome to posting on the Cove, I see that you have been lurking a very long time:bigwave:
I very much like your map.
Thanks for sharing

Your comments on the contents of the attachment please. Any suggestions for improving it will be greatly appreciated

Hennie, I like your map, but suggest you add Training and competence under HR in blue as a support, and Process design under Engineering/SHE in green as customer oriented. I saw a QA function in addition to QC. I would add Internal Audit under the QA function as a yellow Management oriented.

These are suggestions of things I would add for our process. May not apply to yours.

Ralph, appreciate your comments. Do you suggest that I enter it under these key functions across the different product introduction stages?

Ralph, appreciate your comments. Do you suggest that I enter it under these key functions across the different product introduction stages?
I suggest you enter them with the Engineering/SHE a Process design in green in the Product/Process section and also the HR blue block in that same section. Then I would put the QA audit yellow block in the top part of the series production section. Do what meets your actual interaction sequence for your operation. Process design items like APQP, FMEAs, Control Plans, and Training & competence, and internal audits are key functions. These will be instrumental in controlling and improving you processes. Also, 3rd party auditors will definately want to see your documentation and records to verify compliance.
Hope this helps.

of the process. I would like to offer a couple of comments. You have done a great job of keeping the activity descriptions to just 'verb/noun' relationships; 'Customer approval', etc. Using 'swim lanes' is also a nice technique to show the responsibilities. I do however want to share with you (and other readers) that there are some other aspects to this kind of flow chart vs. an effective 'process map' - a process map should be created by a cross-functional team made up from people who are the customers, suppliers and users of the process, including the process 'owner'. The creation of the map should be the 'current state' (like a Lean Value stream map). This method will identify much of the non-value added activities, such as the places where processing information gets 'held up' because all the info. isn't available. For example; when processing a Purchasing requisition, how many are not processed and 'wait' on a buyers desk, while the buyer processes the 'complete' ones? The volume and waiting etc associated with this type of activity can be captured.
Similarly, the various process measurement details for the process should be included, since the process owner will have to indicate what gets measured (against the quality objectives) to indicate the (effective) performance of the process.
Once these are included in the diagram, you've got a good place to start improvements...............!!
Andy

Your comments on the contents of the attachment please. Any suggestions for improving it will be greatly appreciated

Hennie

I like it a lot - in particular you have avoided the "ISO numbers and names" trap so many of us fall into.

You have a nice little business system there - that just happens to meet all the requirments for a quality system. Well done.

Hennie

I like it a lot - in particular you have avoided the "ISO numbers and names" trap so many of us fall into.

You have a nice little business system there - that just happens to meet all the requirments for a quality system. Well done.


Could you elaborate a bit on the "ISO numbers and names" trap? Years ago in our 9K2K registration audit, we received an observation for not having applicable procedures (level II) and work instructions (level III) listed with their appropriate tasks.

I always thought it made sense to be able to immediately identify which procedure, by name and number, applied to each box on the map, no?

Tym

Overall you have done a very good job of desnarling what seems to be a complicated process. Excellent.

I do have one nit to pick. On the very bottom, in a blue box, you have "Warhousing". Shouldn't that be "Warehousing"? That sounds like the type of thing that might fly right through a spell checker.

I hope that this isn't seen as a mean attempt to find fault, but as an attempt to make sure that the product of your hard work and time spent is seen as being flawless. Anyone who has seen my posts will know that I do occasionally mangle words myself...

:thanx: You are correct. I developed the flow chart in Visio and never used the spell check

:confused: Tym, this flow chart is only the 'front end" to the management system. I plan to create hyperlinks from the boxes which will direct the user to tables containing all applicable procedures, WI's and forms.

Andy, likewise I can also link it to the applcable documents/records, etc. referenced in your response.
Does it make sense?

Could you elaborate a bit on the "ISO numbers and names" trap? Years ago in our 9K2K registration audit, we received an observation for not having applicable procedures (level II) and work instructions (level III) listed with their appropriate tasks. I always thought it made sense to be able to immediately identify which procedure, by name and number, applied to each box on the map, no? Tym

Hi Tym

This is my favorite topic. I think a lot of people here agree. We long for the next generation ISO standard that replaces the word quality with the word business. We dream of the day the President calls all department heads to a meeting to demand we get behind his new pet project the ISO 9000:2020 Business Mangement System. We'll watch in awe as all the heads nod approval and shout Yessir! They wouldn't do it for us, but they'll do it for him.

We always have trouble getting management committment for the ISO system. And no wonder. As soon as we say "quality system" the senior managers delegate it to the Quality Manager. They never delegate the authority needed, just the responsibility.

If you look at ISO, only about 20% of it belongs to the department known as quality.

So I do everything in my power never to let on that there is an ISO standard or a quality standard. I only talk about our business system.

I have a x-ref that shows how our biz system meets each ISO/TS clause, but only 2 of us even know it exists. Our auditor has never asked to see it. He can see that our system as written meets the requirements without needing the numbers, perhaps we are really lucky.

On a more fundamental note, seeing something like "7.2.2" just causes me intense pain.

We run our business the way we see fit. We have the systems and documentation we think we need. Alwys have, always will.

It is easier to bend ISO/TS to the business than try to adapt the business to ISO/TS.

There are a few oddball things we needed to add that we may not have done on our own, but I try to sell them as prevention oriented activities (MSA, supplier development, any kind of structure in Sales). The department called quality ends up doing these things until the day the real owners see the value in them.

I always tell the process owners to just go ahead and make any change they want in their systems, they have no need to worry about ISO/TS at all.

I tell them if it makes business sense I can sell it to the auditor.

I know I have decades of things gone wrong prevention ideas on my side (the ISO clauses). It usually doesn't take much effort to point out things they overlooked, that will make their system stronger.

To use the process model, quality is a result (output) of the business process. Quality is not a process on its own.

The fastest way to get certified is to scan ISO, replace the word supplier with your company name and call in "the low cost registrar". Takes less than a day. It is also the best way to ensure that nothing changes expect the sudden appearance of an expensive plak on the wall.

So that's what I call the ISO names and numbers trap.

Caster, fully agree with you. I convinced my MD that we should stop referring to the term "Quality Management System" and just call it "Management System". For the rest it is still the "Quality Management System". At a few occations the MD referred to the Quality Department as the "Quality Safety Net", obviously not realizing that a net is full of holes and that people in the quality profession are not super humans out of space.
What frustrates me the most is the lack of logical thinking and common sense. Sales people, my experience is that the majority of them:mad: lack both of these and that it is normally the "Quality Department" that must sort out the problems resulting from their absolute stupid practices and decisions.