Can we exclude our subsidiary company from our ISO 9001 certification?

[AndyN]

Re: Can we exclude our subsidiary company from our certification?

Don't worry! There are PLENTY of people who, even in our industry, haven't grasped it yet! We all had to start at the beginning.

From what you write, some alarm bells are sounding in my head! You shouldn't be creating documents "for the audit". As far as scope etc. if this hasn't already been determined and agreed with your management team, you should STOP and engage with them to get clarity on that, plus a lot more. "Doing ISO" isn't about one person writing documents and then calling in an auditor...

Perhaps you'd clarify for us what's going on, so we can help you avoid an expensive and - for you - highly risky situation...

 

[John Broomfield]

Re: Can we exclude our subsidiary company from our certification?

shoegal,

Chances are that most of your procedures already exist but they may not yet be documented so they are easily kept up to date. For this you may want to search this site for wiki and Pancho.

You are well-advised to respect these ways of doing the work that are essential for satisfying customer requirements.

Imposing new procedures written around ISO 9001 will disengage those whom you need to make the processes work and interact as they do when your organization designs and delivers quality services and products.

Start by understanding the management system you've already got. The one that runs your organization as it gets work, does work, gets paid and invests in improvement. For this you may want to search this site for developing a process-based management system.

John

 

[shoegal979]

Re: Can we exclude our subsidiary company from our certification?

Thanks Andy! I guess I should not have said for the audit. The procedures we have in place are for the company and to provide quality service to the customer of course. What I meant was we definitely wanted to make sure that we do have at least the minimum required procedures written and in place and followed, plus whatever other procedures that become required as we find ourselves actually following said procedures. Our ultimate goal, of course, is to be ISO certified and to provide quality products/services to our customers and avoid quality issues because of lack of an efficient, well-run and established quality management system.

We have a quality management system in place and I had taken over from a previous employee who started the program. I was writing and establishing procedures. It then got to the point where I couldn't handle my regular position plus the quality management system so another employee was hired to take over the responsiblity of completing the quality manual and required procedures and now I mostly handle the paperwork of it all, making sure we have documentation for CAPAs, management reviews, audits etc. Although we have not completed any audits just yet or have the established SOP in place.

As for the scope, I think we will have to hold a few more management involved meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page with how we want to move forward with the certification and what exactly we are certifying.

John, what do you mean by process-based management system?

 

[John Broomfield]

Re: Can we exclude our subsidiary company from our certification?

shoegal,

Your organization is a system (parts that work together to fulfill a purpose) that runs on its processes to fulfill its mission. This is your process-based management system. If, instead of processes, your organization has departments doing their own thing then you need to help them to focus on the processes that serve customers and keep the organization in business.

The work done by employees and their machines should first be organized to convert the needs of customers into cash in the bank. End to end, this is the core process. Everything else the organization does is meant to make this core process better for its current and future customers.

Understanding this system and its purpose is essential to determine the processes that are necessary for the success of your management system (see clause 4.1).

These processes are cross-functional where several functions or department collaborate in making the process (collective work) effective and better. These processes also interact with each other in the organization working as a system to fulfill its mission or purpose.

The processes you include and exclude in the management system and the detail you include or exclude in the flowcharted procedures (see below) are the result of risk-based thinking to realize opportunities and to prevent or manage adverse risks.

You can then develop your organization's process-based management system by working with the process owners; each of whom know how their process actually works. You could use deployment flowcharts to capture the processes as they actually work. Each if these then becomes a flowcharted procedure that describes what the process team members do to fulfill their process objective.

Conversely, people list what they think are important procedures and write them based on interviews and what the standard specifies. You may be in luck and find that your procedures do accurately reflect the way the processes interact and are carried out. You should check with your process owners and they, in turn, verify accuracy with their process teams. Then all you have to do is verify conformity to clause 4.1.

The process-approach is recommended by ISO 9001:2008 and is required by ISO 9001:2015.

BTW, you may find this thread useful: http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?p=541039#post541039

John

 

[Walnut]

Adding to John's reply if I may. Flow chart what occurs from when a customers inquiry is made until payment is received and include as much detail as you think is necessary to give an overview of how an order flows thru your organization. Add detail at each step along the way as you decide what is necessary in order to control and measure each process.
This should be done with input from all the people who actually perform the tasks and the process owners. This will give you a good view of how your organization actually operates and may point out weaknesses that could be improved. If you add performance indicators to the processes that you wish to measure for improvement you are well on your way to looking at a process based system.

 

[Big Jim]

<snip> The company I work for is trying to get ISO certified and we were wondering if we could exclude our subsidiary company from the certification? I think that we can but I wonder if there are any stipulations. The parent company is called Senspex and the subsidiary is called Senspex Technical Services. Also, both companies do operate from the same location. Any information would be extremely helpful and I thank you in advance.

The short answer is yes.

The term exclude as used in ISO 9001 has a bit more narrow connotation, as it is the term used in element 1.2 about application, and there it deals with being able to exclude portions of the ISO 9001 standard from your scope of registration if that portion of the standard does not apply to your company.

Your scope of registration is where you define which portions of the company are going to be certified. For example: The manufacture and sale of custom boots for the wilderness firefighter.

That example is notable because that boot company make all sorts of other boots as well, but they chose to only certify the portion of the business that manufactures boots for wilderness firefighters.

In one of the examples given in training many years ago was of a plastic molding company that made many plastic parts for many applications, but chose only to certify the portion of the company that makes dashboard covers for automobiles.

So it isn't necessarily a matter of excluding something, it is more a matter of what you include in your scope of registration.

 

[shoegal979]

Wow, John, thank you for taking the time to explain what you meant. That is a great deal of information and very helpful to me. I think I will have to go back and review clause 4.1 more closely! Walnut, that is an excellent suggestion which I will start on right away! And Big Jim, thank you so much for those examples, they really clarified things for me and I was able to visualize a little more what we are looking to do with our certification.

 

[AndyN]

Jim is correct and gives good examples. There are, however, some pros and cons with scopes statements which limit the range of products included in the QMS. The scope statement on your ISO 9001 (or other standard) certificate is a bit like a store front. If a (potential) customer it looking to see, from your certificate, what products you make and they can buy, it might cause them concern that the widest range of products isn't included. Jim's nice example of firefighters boots, may represent a very small (tiny) proportion of the total product range available.

As a result, the customer may question why? "Surely, the manufacture of boots and shoes isn't so complicated that they didn't have a QMS for all?" "Maybe they're not capable of producing a good product, except for these boots"... and so on. A scope statement can be a double edged sword. Your competition may point out to the same potential customers that your organization doesn't take customer satisfaction seriously enough to have ALL products on the scope of the certificate. And so it goes on...

When considering what's "in" and what's "out" of your management system and therefore, what will appear on your certificate, these situations are worthy of note.