Auditor had no findings for last few years - Fed up with the whole thing...

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GoKats78

#14
So, these major and minor nonconformities that exist in your system, did you point any of them out the the external auditors when they were there?

OK, so you may say that it is their job to audit the system and if they spot anything wrong, to point it out to you but if they are sleeping their way through the audit, why note tell them about the problems and let them raise them to your top management.

Better still, why not fix them anyway? It isn't mandatory to get an N/C before fixing a situation. :)


Have you checked the job market lately? If I did what you suggest in the first paragraph I would be....

As to your last paragragh, I am not empowered to fix the level of problems that exist....

I have come to the conclusion that the ISO registration system is just a racket....
 

Colin

Quite Involved in Discussions
#15
I know it can't be easy but if you don't want to do it overtly, there are more subtle ways of leading an auditor to areas you want him to see.

As for being a racket, perhaps, but the more we do nothing about it, the more we are complicit in the problem. By doing nothing we effectively condone the fact that auditors don't find the real problems because we hide the facts from them. They are auditors taking a sample, not detectives with unlimited resources.
 

jkuil

Quite Involved in Discussions
#16
I have been in the same situation and the company went down hill because the customers left due to poor quality.

For the managements quality just seems to be of no economic value, whereas satisfied customers are priceless.

Still for many quality improvements huge reductions of failure costs can be saved. Make sure you present every improvement plan with a business case in which you provide the arguments that it makes economic sense to take actions. After these low hanging fruits, please proceed to risk management tools to assure your customer requirements are consistently met.
 

Sidney Vianna

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Staff member
Admin
#17
Don't know about the customer though...
I have been in the same situation and the company went down hill because the customers left due to poor quality.
That is why I asked
What does your customer satisfaction data show?
At the end of the day, an organization's sustainability follows the customer satisfaction path.

You can have all the certs hanging on your lobby, all awards, all the audits with zero non-conformity.....still, if your customers go elsewhere, you don't have a business. If your top management does not track proper indicators about the organization's continued success, and, even worse, is not interested, there is nothing one can do.

As for being a racket, perhaps, but the more we do nothing about it, the more we are complicit in the problem. By doing nothing we effectively condone the fact that auditors don't find the real problems because we hide the facts from them.
I agree with that. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The CB should be provided with feedback on how useless the auditor has been.

They are auditors taking a sample, not detectives with unlimited resources.
That disclaimer does not fly, IMO. Audits should be adequately planned. Customer feedback, product performance, failures, returns, etc...these should all be used as input for proper audit planning. So audits are not random exercises, but risk-based, focused, value added assessments.
 

Colin

Quite Involved in Discussions
#18
I must agree with you to some extent Sidney regarding the sample and definitely about the audit planning. However, most 3rd party auditors I know get very little time to effectively plan their audits. It tends to be just a matter of filling in the sheet to demonstrate what they will look at - which I believe is different to planning.

I too subscribe to the practice of looking at the end of the process to see how effective it has been. Feedback, rejects, scrap levels, field failures, etc are all costing money and probably losing business - surely top management care about that? :confused:

However, it is true that internal audits should get much closer to the action than external ones, if only for the fact that they have much more time available.

What really concerns me about the OP is that it was mentioned about Major N/C's existing. Where I come from that means either the lack of a required system or the total breakdown of a system. That can't be hard to see can it?
 

Sidney Vianna

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Staff member
Admin
#19
However, most 3rd party auditors I know get very little time to effectively plan their audits. It tends to be just a matter of filling in the sheet to demonstrate what they will look at - which I believe is different to planning.
That is why I point out that the trivialization, the commoditization, the assembly-line approach to management system audits might prove to be the demise of the third-party certification process.


When auditors believe that an audit consists of:
  1. showing up,
  2. asking disjointed questions and
  3. leaving to the airport ASAP
as a sustainable business proposition, we are all in trouble.

Luckily we have some CB's, auditors and industry representatives who want to maintain sanity in this process and extract valuable results from audits. But time will tell if they will be overwhelmed by the portion of the CB community and certificate users that just want the ticket to trade.

Until this service sector addresses the needs of the actual users of certificates, instead of blindly focusing on the registrant's customer satisfaction, the market will foment the path of least resistance delivery.
 

Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#20
That is why I point out that the trivialization, the commoditization, the assembly-line approach to management system audits might prove to be the demise of the third-party certification process.
<SNIP>
Until this service sector addresses the needs of the actual users of certificates, instead of blindly focusing on the registrant's customer satisfaction, the market will foment the path of least resistance delivery.
Given what Sidney writes, is it logical to posit the primary solution to the situation of "sign and go" audits lies in educating the OEMs (and other customers who demand certificates of registration to ISO QMS Standards) about the relative worth of some audits opposed to other audits? With such education, those demanding registration to third party ISO QMS Standards might impose restrictions on the nature of third party audits much in the same way automotive OEMs add customer-specific requirements to ISO 16949.
 
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