Exactly how high in the organization is it necessary to have training records?

Exactly how high in the organization is it necessary to have training records? For instance, does a Manager or Director of a department need to have a training record or can his/her past experience be substituted?
Is it acceptable to say that if the individual approves all procedures and signs off all Change orders for documents, that they are "trained" on all procedures that they approve?

In answer to your second question, yes, if the person who signs off all the procedures is actually reading the documents prior to signing then they have received training. It has only been successful so long as they understand the process, if there is some doubt then they would still require training on those aspects of the procedure they did not understand.
Training records should always be maintained if an individual attends a course no matter how high they are in the company. You can however class people as "skilled" in thier area. I am not quite sure how you can allocate this title, i am sure you have to prove that they have years of practice and some initial qualification- all be it years ago.

Hope this helps

Retro

[Marc]

You do not need a training record as proof of experience. For every job you have to define what the requirements are. You might have a welding position where you hire 3 levels of people. 1. Experience, but no formal training, 2. Formal training and certification, and 3. No experience and no training / certification. As far as training records go, (1) would be a resume or excerpt proving experience, (2) would be the certification, and (3) means you have to provide some sort of escallation where maybe the person first serves as an apprentive, you can put him/her through a certification class.

Up above it's basically the same. The CEO has a lot to do (or so they say). But most of what a CEO does is not structured like a manufacturing line. You have a line and you can train them on the machine(s). A CEO is seldom going to have a training record applicable to his/her job as it relates to his/her daily duties. Remember, however, that CEOs are typically hired on the basis of their experience (What have you managed? For how long? What have you achieved in your management experience?) and education (business school undergrad? Harvard? MBA? MBA from where?)

While there are different types of training, it's basically either orientation, job specific / related or personal improvement.

Taken to the extreme, if you hire a consultant to help you through an ISO implementation, what are your 'hire' criteria? It probably should include Lead Auditor Training for which the consultant could give you a copy of for your records. You would also probably want a copy of a resume and/or list of companies the consultant has worked with in implementing ISO. This is just to remind that even contract help need the appropriate 'training' record. One might even want to call it a qualification record instead of a training record throughout an organization. Can't say I've ever seen it done that way, but it makes sense to me.

I guess I need to be more specific. Do I need to have proof in the form of training records, that every Director, or V.P. or Manager has been trained for each Quality manual revision? Keep in mind that in my case our quality manual CONTAINS each SOP that addresses each element of ISO 9000? In my case (Quality) I can see why I would have a training record for all of the SOP's since they are all related to the quality system that I oversee but the Director of Manufacturing, would he need to be trained on the SOP for "Control of Documents" and would it need to be a written record?

[Marc]

I've never seen any 'trained' per se. Typically what I see is those folks are responsible for knowing which parts apply to them and that they follow any required systems. For example they have to understand the management review part of the quality manual. Many companies do not do any specific, recorded training on the manual but, as above, ensure everyone knows systems in which they participate and knows and follows the appropriate documentation. The expectation is they can read the document and that the document is reasonably easy to understand.

In short, in my opinion the answer is you do not need a record unless your system requires one.