After, requesting from our registrar, the criteria for consolidating several ISO certs into a signle certification, the registrar provided a series of questions that develop their criteria for consolidation. There are 12 questions (Y/N) to be answered, answer YES to all and you are a candidate for consolidation. There are two questions that we answered NO:
1)Are internal audits conducted at all locations and reviewed centrally? Each site conducts audits but the are reviewed at the individual site level.
2)Is the management system documentation in effect applicable at all locations? We currently have four seperate quality manuals for each cert. They are very similar (format, etc.) but some customization exists in some of the elements of the documentation system.
I am interested in some ideas that can help me take our quality system towards consolidation and result in a YES to these questions.
First.... in my humble opinion.....ask some other registrars their criteria so you can justify from that angle.....
now for your 2 issues
1) Do a summary of the internal audit functions from each site, that can get bounced upward and be included in a corporate review. Doesn't each division report to the higher level at some point? Maybe its just a matter of defining that agenda.
2) Combine the manuals, and identify the differences for each site...should be easy if there are only a few specific ones...be generic and don't address the "how to" stuff in the manual....leave that to the site specific procedures
On page 110 of the QSR, there is a paragraph that addresses this issue, and identifies the conditions required for a "corporate" certificate (if that is what you are going after). The registrar then determines if you meet these conditions.
For #1, I can understand the requirement for centrally reviewing internal audit results - and one way to do this is to use a database that can be viewed by all of the plants. That way common corrective and preventive actions can be applied where needed.
For #2, I don't see a lot of problem with having separate quality manuals, as long as the differences lie in the "customization" for each plant. However, one of the conditions in the QSR states the quality system must be centrally structured and managed. Having four separate quality manuals might make this a bit difficult. My advice to you would be to consolidate all of the manuals and make a single issue of your company's procedures, so that everyone is on the same page(no pun intended).
Mike had the right idea, the questions the registrar is asking come from QS-9000 manual if you are a QS company and R1.2 Requirements for Registration Bodies if you are just ISO-9000. All accredited registrars have to follow these rules to maintain their accreditation. The docuemnt is pretty straight forward, ask you registrar for a copy.
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