ISO 9001 Staffing Requirements - Discussion

[Marc]

From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:28:28 -0500
Subject: Q: ISO Staffing /Oys

From: "Oys, Carol"

Can anyone provide some comparative information regarding the size of the Staff you utilize to support your ISO processes? We are primarily a service organization who designs, delivers and operates custom software applications, with about 320 employees at three different sites. We are comfortable with the positions we have of Mgmt. Rep, Audit Mgr. and Documentation Mgr. - yet would like to get a feel for what other organizations of similar size are using to help support their Quality Systems. Thank you.

Carol E. Oys


From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:51:24 -0500
Subject: Re: ISO Staffing /Oys/Kelley

From: "Lance R. Kelley"

We have a 250 person operation (software development, hardware design & manufacturing, and a service area) primarily operating out of one state (California) with two satellite operations in two eastern states. Our quality management system is handled by: 1 full-time Quality System Administrator (QSA), 1 management rep - the COO, 1 lead auditor - our Controller, 1 six-person quality steering team, and 8 two-person internal audit teams. The only full-time position is the QSA; the rest of the team spends a very minor amount of time per month keeping the quality system alive and improving.

Our quality system is intentionally decentralized to the appropriate application department areas and we have intended to keep the quality management overhead costs as low as possible while maximizing the punch of the corporate quality system. At this point we are maintaining an ISO 9001 registration, facilitating the corporate quality metrics for senior executives, and researching the best methods for customer satisfaction surveys. Hope this info helps.

Lance

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From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:54:39 -0500
Subject: Re: ISO Staffing /Oys/Hankwitz

From: "Hankwitz, John"

> From: "Oys, Carol"
>
> Can anyone provide some comparative information regarding the
> size of the Staff you utilize to support your ISO processes?
>
(snip)
> Carol E. Oys
>

Carol,

We're a design and manufacturing company with about 600 employees, and registered to ISO 9001 for over six years.

We initially started with a team of eight to create our quality system from scratch to become registered in 18 months. After registration, our team dwindled down to two within a year, then only one (me) for two years. I added another person to help maintain documentation, and have remained with just the two of us.

In addition, we maintain a staff of between five and fifteen Internal Auditors that participate on a part time basis. These Internal Auditors have all completed the Stat-A-Matrix Internal Auditor program to become qualified, and perform the 30 internal department audits we have each year in their spare time. We also have a Customer Satisfaction department, with a full-time staff of three, to constantly contact our customers to monitor and report on how well we're doing in their eyes. (Customer Satisfaction/Feedback is a big priority for us)

I personally handle internal audit scheduling, corrective actions, process improvement, continuous improvement, quality training, Management review, and 3rd party audits. My assistant manages the revision and control of the 800 procedures and instructions on our intranet site.

Manufacturing and Engineering maintain and control an additional 600 product specific assembly, inspection and test instructions.

The size of the staff you'll need depends on how you structure your systems. If you decide to make your quality department responsible for quality, you'll need a large staff. If you make the employees responsible for quality, and automate your systems, you'll need a smaller staff.

I understand that some companies base manager pay on the number of people they supervise. If this is your situation, you might opt for a large and inefficient quality system. If your pay is based of how efficiently you manage your work, you'll want to automate, simplify, and see if you can eventually do everything all by yourself.

Hope this helps,

John Hankwitz

[Marc]

From: ISO Standards Discussion
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 16:07:49 -0500
Subject: Re: ISO Staffing /Oys/Kiely

From: GKiely

Carol,

My organization currently has approximately 500 employee's. We currently utilize one (1) Management Representative who has been empowered to develop and implement systems in support of the ISO process. By design ISO was built right into all our applicable processes so the answer to our question is all 500 employees support the ISO process. Well designed ISO systems should be self-sustaining and part of everybody's day-to-day activities. You should not build systems that require dedicated personnel just because of ISO.

Even our internal auditing team (15) have real day-to-day (non-ISO) jobs.....

Gerry Kiely

Hi,
My team is composed of 45 software professionals (design & development), plus 5 testing engineers (only functional skills) plus 5 additional staff.

My organization (ALGORITMA) is a swiss-romanian joint venture launched in 1993. Core business: offshore software development - Web sites (e-comm, promotional sites, Web interfaces to distant data bases with secured acces).


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