Paula,
Should have read further. (42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything - not 6)
There has been considerable discussion on this point, one example being:
ISO 9001:2000 Documentation Requirements
My offering in that thread was:
“It's intersting that these relate back directly to those areas that typically the "Quality Section" of a company is responsible for. This kind of suggests that it is the bare bones approach, and that if you do anything that adds value, beyond the QA stuff mentioned, then you'd better be able to back them up with something as well.”
This bare-bones SIX approach is crap, you could roll them all into one procedure if you wanted to, but you wouldn’t, because it doesn’t make for concise, compartmentalized reading, comprehension and adherence/compliance (or even auditing).
Martin, please tell us what your IQA tutor said about what should be in a quality manual - I can’t wait to hear that one! No wonder consultants have such a bad rep when they sprout garbage.
As you can tell this is an emotive subject for me. Why? Because quality systems (and quality managers) have been losing their credibility thanks to inexperienced low IQ consultants who flog generic management systems to unsuspecting companies and the companies are in turn registered/certified by corrupt registrars.
My new employer is ISO9001:1994 certified, and a great case in point. They have next to no objective evidence, a very thin collection of system procedures (4 of which cover the same topic under different headings) and next to no control over anything. They want to expand the certification to a global one for all their offices (my job). I’ll be busy righting past wrongs – and with a different third party auditor – AND I’LL BE USING MORE THAN SIX PROCEDURES.
ISO should come up with a scheme to reinforce the validity of a certificate/registration - oh, that's right, they're the third party auditors, D'oh, click, bang .......
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[This message has been edited by David Mullins (edited 04 January 2001).]