HI,
Currently management plan to implement ISO 9001 on one of the group small subsidiary company on trading business.
What is the QC role in the system? In process and quality check is necessary?
Thanks.
Leo,
Please do not assume that your trading company has no management system. Respecting that management system and making it better is the goal.
Start by deeply studying clause 4.1 of ISO 9001 and really understanding the interactions between your trading company's suppliers and customers what your trading company does to ensure each customer's requirements are understood and fulfilled.
Determine the processes operated, controlled and monitored to determine and fulfill customer requirements. Determine the criteria your subsidiary uses to select their suppliers so they are assured of quality (conformity to requirements).
As a result of analyzing each of these processes and their interactions, you may find your trading company already fulfills customer requirements without additional QC or process control. In which case do not add any but do document the procedures as necessary to ensure employees know who does what to fulfill the process success criteria (see 4.1c). Ensure the leaders are aware of their responsibility to continue to provide a management system that helps the employees (and suppliers) to understand and fulfill customer requirements.
For more information search the Cove for developing a process-based management system. Also search for
SIPOC.
For ongoing quality assurance you need confidence that your trading company's management system will continue to result in outcomes that fulfill the requirements of customers and other stakeholders. For this you'll need to establish an internal audit programme with objectives set by top management and the process (governed by a documented procedure) and two carefully selected people trained to work part-time as auditors. Ask them to design their new audit process after they are trained.
Your new internal audit process should not replace the process monitoring already in place. Indeed it should sample the process monitoring to report on its effectiveness in correcting the process and its success criteria (see 4.1c) as necessary for the processes to be effective. The internal audit process also determines and reports conformity of the management system with the requirements specified in ISO 9001.
Another new process for your trading company's management system is solving costly problems as soon as they are predicted (by risk assessment or data analysis) or experienced as failures to fulfill requirements. Again you need to select people for training and process development who have the patience to determine the root causes instead of jumping to conclusions.
You should arrange for your company to provide its subsidiary with the support it needs. The costs may be shared with other parts of the company that need assurance of quality and the year by year reduction in the costs of poor quality.
Keep the questions coming here from yourgoodself and directly from the person you authorize to develop the management system.
John