Implementing ISO 9001 for a small fabrication company

[StuartM38]

Hello All,

I am looking for a step in the right direction and a heads up where to start.
I ave just been employed as a small steel fabrication company to implement and get them ready for ISO 9001. I am an Internal Auditor and have been a QA coordinator for the past three years, for a subsea company with both iso9001 and 29001 and I have 8 months to go before I complete my CQI course in Quality Management.
They do not have anything in place as such and all designs are made from customer owned engineering drawings, so do all requirements of section 7 apply.
They are all on board with what is required and I will have the support and any resources made available to me, costs not a problem.
I know that I have to look at their processes and procedures but which ones do I tackle first?
I am thinking I will need between 10-15 procedures to cover everything? Is this too many or not enough?
This is a step up from what I do so don't really want to muck it up.

 

[AndyN]

Hello All,

I am looking for a step in the right direction and a heads up where to start.
I ave just been employed as a small steel fabrication company to implement and get them ready for ISO 9001. I am an Internal Auditor and have been a QA coordinator for the past three years, for a subsea company with both iso9001 and 29001 and I have 8 months to go before I complete my CQI course in Quality Management.
They do not have anything in place as such and all designs are made from customer owned engineering drawings, so do all requirements of section 7 apply.
They are all on board with what is required and I will have the support and any resources made available to me, costs not a problem.
I know that I have to look at their processes and procedures but which ones do I tackle first?
I am thinking I will need between 10-15 procedures to cover everything? Is this too many or not enough?
This is a step up from what I do so don't really want to muck it up.

Well, you start with not doing it yourself! It will become "your" system and everyone will avoid it, pretty much, when it comes time to do anything or fix something when it's audited.

Get the management team together and map the entire process of taking work in (from quoting) to delivery. Do not fall into the trap of thinking about "numbers of procedures/processes" - that's also a mistake. Gather up anything they use as part of practice today, so that you can "fit" them to the process as you map it out. Keep a running list of issues that each person tells you they have problems with, as you go through each process, end to end. When you have the whole thing mapped out, warts and all - no changing it because people are embarrassed by the problems - then you can help them document additional controls which may be decided are necessary, get them under doc control etc.

 

[StuartM38]

Thanks will do

 

[Billy M]

Andy is correct in stating that don't do it all yourself. You have to get participation by everyone. I like to take each section of the standard and determine someone that is the section owner for that section and they will be responsible for the activities in that section. Some of those will be you, but others would be purchasing, manufacturing, engineering, etc.

If you are working on ISO/TS 29901 be aware of the control features that API requires. There are only 6 procedural requirements within ISO 9001 but API requires control features on 16 other items, so consider this with your documentation. I like to do Flowcharts for those items.

Andy was also correct in stating to get everyone together and determine the processes needed and document that way. It should be a total team involvement effort. Too many times the Quality Manager or person responsible for implementing the system gets stuck with the task of doing everything.

 

[Big Jim]

I completely agree on getting everyone on board from the start. It is my belief that ISO 9001 fosters a participative management style. Things go much smoother when everyone is working together.

On flow charting, my advice is to not go overboard. You don't need to define everything down to the minutia. A consultant that went into a shop before me told the shop owner that the first thing they needed to do was to flow chart the entire operation to the extent that anyone from the outside could step into any roll and function from the flow chart. Four months later they had generated several pages of flow charts, but had not progressed to the consultants satisfaction to where they could define their processes. This was for a 15 person company.

As a consultant, I usually can get a client through the determining of the core processes and a simple interaction chart in less than two hours. Those with less experience and less exposure to many organizations may take more time, but it needn't be an all day affair.

Even if your were able to get to that ideal state of flow charting to the point that someone from the outside could step in and function, it would not stay that way for very long, because things change.

Also, your documentation needs to provide some flexibility so that it need not be revised at the drop of a hat.

KISS (keep it simple)