Interpreting ISO 9001 Clauses 4.1.a to 4.1.c - What are these Processes?

[Shawn Esmaili]

I need your help to understand what ISO 9001-2000 means by sections (4.1.a to 4.1.c):
4.1.a: " The organization shall identify the processes needed for the quality management system and their aaplication throughout the organization".

Questions:
1) What are these processes in a typical manufacturing company?
2) where can I find a template procedure that covers the section 4 of ISO?


Thanks

Shawn

 

[Wes Bucey]

Re: Quality Management System - section 4

Welcome to the Cove, Shawn!

An interesting question but your timing may be a little off. The Cove goes into a "slow" mode during the weekends here in the USA. Many of our members only visit on work days and thus replies to your post may be slow in coming. If no one else responds to your thread by Monday, consider adding a new post to bump it up into the "last 24 hours" queue to attract more replies.

I'll keep an eye out and if you don't receive some adequate replies, I'll take the time to give a short tutorial about the topic.

 

[harry]

Re: Quality Management System - section 4

Welcome Shawn,

Here's something for you to chew over the weekend:
Quality Management System (QMS) 4.1, a and b
Are Flow Charts REQUIRED by ISO 9001:2000?

There's a current discussion on process mapping here:Process Mapping - Process Flow and Interactions of Processes - ISO 9001

 

[AndyN]

Re: Quality Management System - section 4

I need your help to understand what ISO 9001-2000 means by sections (4.1.a to 4.1.c):
4.1.a: " The organization shall identify the processes needed for the quality management system and their aaplication throughout the organization".

Questions:
1) What are these processes in a typical manufacturing company?
2) where can I find a template procedure that covers the section 4 of ISO?


Thanks

Shawn

Shawn:
Welcome to the Cove. As Wes said, it's a bit slow here over the weekends, but sometimes people visit during commercials!
It would help to know a bit more to the background of your question. Do you not know about manufacturing? Any process map or similar process description is going to be different for all kinds of reasons. As also posted there are many other good threads about this subject.

I would suggest to you that there isn't a 'procedure' that covers section 4.1 It's not required and it would be difficult to 'proceduralize' this aspect and that's not really the purpose of this section.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

I need your help to understand what ISO 9001-2000 means by sections (4.1.a to 4.1.c):
4.1.a: " The organization shall identify the processes needed for the quality management system and their aaplication throughout the organization".

Questions:
1) What are these processes in a typical manufacturing company?
2) where can I find a template procedure that covers the section 4 of ISO?


Thanks

Shawn

What cl 4.1 asks you to do is define the activities your organization does. The various departments in your company is a good start. Sales, Engineering, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Shipping, etc. Those typically will be your main processes, but define them and call them what you actually do. Don't use my terms. You also do a lot of supporting or administrative activities - Training, Maintenance, Audits, Management, ...etc. Those have to be defined too.

Cl 4.1.c says for each of these processes, define how you will determin they are effective. What will you judge them by? How will you monitor or measure whether Training is effective? How about Purchasing, Maintenance, etc? These criteria become the inputs you will select to measure in cl 4.1.e.

There has been much written about cl 4.1 on the Cove, including many psots by me. This is a key part of the ISO 9001 system, and it would serve you well to research it well before proceeding.