Hi there,

Over the past year, I have been appointed to the position of trying to implement ISO9001:2000/8 in our company.

Before this, I had very little if not none experience in this subject, infact I hadn't even ever heard of it!

I have been on an ISO9001 course and an auditing course which did help and i have began to create our Quality Manual and procedures etc.

We are a very small engineering company, only with 6 employees.

I would just like like some advice as I seem to have hit a stumbling block and I feel as if im just lost among all the paperwork and can't seem to see what to do next... :confused:

Many thanks for any help or advice
Raechel

Welcome to the Cove :bigwave: - and welcome to the 'madhouse', by the sounds of it!

First the good news, you did the right thing in getting the training you went to, it will pay you back many times over. The downside is that we need more information about the areas you are struggling with.

A little time spent with the search function on the cove will reveal all manner of threads on this topic. You normally get a more accurate response from the Cove if you ask specific questions e.g. "how do I write my procedures"? rather than a broad question which you have started with. Please ask away and we will try to help.

............. I would just like like some advice as I seem to have hit a stumbling block and I feel as if im just lost among all the paperwork and can't seem to see what to do next... :confused:

Many thanks for any help or advice
Raechel

Welcome,

You must be really lost..... What help do you need or how can we help you? Please try to be more specific in order to attract appropriate answers.

Ok, I will start posting threads with my specific probelems.
Everything just seemed so clear after I had done the training, but now it all seems to have gone a bit hazy! Thanks again....

Here are some threads (not all ISO 9001) that you may want to peruse: Implementation in a small company (http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&client=pub-1385417534940691&channel=6124086287&cof=FORID%3A1%3BGL%3A1%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2FElsmar.com%2FForums%2F%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Felsmar.com%2Fpng%2Fheader-G-search.png%3BLH%3A50%3BLW%3A350%3BLBGC%3A000099%3BT%3A%230000ff%3BLC%3A%23000000%3BVLC%3A%23663399%3BDIV%3A%23336699%3B&domains=Elsmar.com&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&q=small+company+implementation&btnG=Search&sitesearch=Elsmar.com)

A general course of implementation (http://elsmar.com/Imp/).

Welcome,

You must be really lost..... What help do you need or how can we help you? Please try to be more specific in order to attract appropriate answers.

Yes, it would be nice to know what kind of company? Manufacturing, service? :confused:

Well currently we have ongoing Research and Design Projects into Downhole Pipeline tools. However we also do Pipeline intervention engineering work for other companies...

Do not despair Raechel, many people have been through this process. I work in a company with 7 others and have been ISO 9001 for 9 years. Much of the available training material uses large companies as examples and sometimes it's difficult to see how it can be implemented by so few.

Luckily you've come to the best resource available for implementing a quality management system! And there's lots of people who can help you here.
Good luck.

How far have you got with your system so far? Have you identified/defined your main processes and created a description of them?

All I have done so far is written out our mandatory procedures and created a quality manual. Within the manual we have a diagram showing all of our processes....

OK, sounds good so far. Now, having identified your processes, how are you going to control each of them?

Being a small organisation it may be that you don't want to spend too much time & effort writing procedures which won't be read, but perhaps a flowchart or two may be in order, or maybe you will rely on the competence of the people to provide the control.

Well... I would say you have a really good start. You have six people!:lol:

Seriously, with six people you can end up with a really good, useable system.

Here is a suggestion...

Once a week or so, have a lunch at your place; spring for some pizza. I might not even make it scheduled (every Wed.-it becomes boring).

Have a semi-structured agenda. For starters, I might ask prior to the meeting if everyone could write two sentences of what they think the QMS is for or will accomplish. Then, compile them together and read at the meeting. Allow discussion to flow so that it is seen there are different perceptions, but then work on gaining a consensus of purpose.

Too, having semi-structured meetings can allow for all members to understand it is their system; they will be writing procedures, and determining where procedures are needed or not.

As a personal note, I have worked in organization of similar purpose to yours. Engineers have always been most challenged completing documentation on projects. If that is an issue at your organization, realize it and address it. Agree on what is needed to complete; but don't make some massive requirements list that the 6 knows they're probably not going to complete. Make sense?

I know this sounds anecdotal, but seriously, I'm a bit envious of your situation. You have an awesome chance to develop a good system, and have fun while you're doing it. Most of us here at the Cove live to see good systems, so let us know how things go.

Here's how I teach it......

Keep it SIMPLE!

Create a system based upon what you actually do and not upon what you think somebody else will like. The only folks you have to make happy are your folks.

Having just finished helping a small organization (6) implement a quality system I think the best place to start is to develop you chart /list / diagram of key processes. Once everyone agrees on this you can decide as a group what need written instructions / forms / checklists and what does not. Then its a matter of dividing up the work. The key processes is something that everyone can understand and contribute to. It gets everyone involved!!

The quality manual and required procedures you can work on with input from others. Keep it simple - you can always add on, but its hard to remove once in place.

This should get you started on the right track.