General Staff TRAINING in ISO 9001

[ivan99]

I need opinions on how much details do I use to train the general plant staff on the ISO9001-2000 Standard. These folks have not yet had any exposure to the Standard. A QM was written and the 6 required docs are in place. Where do I start and how much details?? Do I need to take hours of their time to discuss each and every clause in details and how it applies?? I am talking about 110 plant workers here??? I probably can take small groups of 5 ppl at a time for no more than 1/2 hr at a time without severly disrupting production.

[Kevin Mader]

Ivan99,

A difficult answer. One size probably wont fit all in this case.

Each associate will have a different level of involvement/interaction with the QMS. A program targeting a janitor would be different than the one you might use to give an overview to a senior manager. Additionally, segments of ISO will be more applicable to one group over another.

What you might try doing is to see if you can roughly group folks according level of interaction and relevant documentation. The detail you will need to get into should be "commensurate to the risk involved". You might aim to be somewhere in the middle, where as you might have documentation overkill while undershooting others.

Kevin

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Ivan,

For this kind of training, or rather information, I'd keep the detail level low, and try to get a discussion going. When people start asking questions you'll be able to give them info suited to their respective needs. That way you'll be able to follow Kevins good advice.

Jim Wade said: Some organizations take the position that the huge majority of the people neeed know nothing about ISO 9001, preferring instead to focus on the organization's own management system. Worth considering!

Wouldn't you think that people at least deserve to get a brief description of what ISO9001 is, and why you're going for it? Besides, you'd have to brief them about the organization's own management system anyway.

Jim Wade said:
Another point - why not have staff 'trained' by their managers - as an ongoing part of their responsibility?

Yes, why not? Another way along the same lines would be to tutor the managers a bit beforehand, to get them to participate actively in the training and "ask the right questions" in meetings like the ones envisaged by Ivan

/Claes

Hi Ivan99,

First question would be, have you attend a training for ISO9001:2000? If not, try to attend yourself so that you can perform an echo training with your people. If yes, you could start by explaining the 8 Quality Management Principles and its application. (You can browse it in www.iso.ch), A seminar that would tackle the following: ISO9001:2000 Quality Systems and PDCA, Quality Management System, Management Responsibility, Resource Management, Product Realization and Measurement, Analysis and improvement.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
Vash

[gpainter]

I would agree that you you only need to mention that your QMS is based on ISO 9001-2000. That should be enough, as far as ISO. We tended to train on ISO and some find it hard to seperate ISO and our QMS. Many say ISO requires this.

[barbt]

Ivan99,

We faced a similar issue with having to 'train' our personnel in the basics of QS900/TE - In our case it was awareness of the standard, our company level policy, and how QS9000 impacted the various departments.

We tackled the whole awareness in two ways. First, I put together a 1/2 hour powerpoint presentation giving the highlights, showing our processes, and listing applicable quality documents for each stage. For each stage, we took pictures of the people involved in that part of the process, and added this to the power point to make the whole thing more personal. - Training was done over several time slots, and I would spend more time on those slides that were relevant to the immediate group. It was general enough to be done in 1/2 an hour, and detailed enough to give everyone the required 'overview'.

Secondly, we added an item to our employee orientation checklist for quality policy awareness. All newcomers are given a quality tour by the QA manager, and we don't have to go through the whole company training bit again.

Good Luck,

Barbt

[tarheel]

I'm just finishing up training hourly and salary people. I gave them an overview of how our documentation system works, the highlights of the 5 sections, how the quality policy and objectives fit for them, and more importantly, what their role in the system is. This way they get a little of the big picture and a lot of the details that apply to them.

[Claes Gefvenberg]

Jim Wade said:

Hi Claes

----X--------

In other words, I think we spend time with people on the back end of the following hierarchy (our objectives and how YOUR part in OUR system will achieve them). As opposed to the front end (the 'standard' we happen to use as a framework or guide)

standards
...provide framework for
......our system
.........which helps us achieve
...........our objectives

rgds Jim

Hullo Jim,

Sure, no argument there. That really is the important stuff. However, I was not talking about going through the standard in any detail, but rather to give a brief description of what ISO9001 is, and why you're going for it. ( Because of the fact that we use it as framework or guide to our system).

/Claes