Paul,
Suitability changes as the standard, voluntary or otherwise, changes. QS9000, 3rd edition is different than the 2nd edition. ISO 9000:2000 will be different than ISO 9000:1994. Your program needs to evolve with standard, otherwise your prgram becomes unsuitable. Suitability audits can be compared to desk studies of your Quality Program (your documents) where it is compared to the standards requirements. Suitability is also defined by you. You need to at a minimum satisfy the requirements of the standard, but many Quality Systems go beyond the standard requirements. For those items, you have to review and determine if these things are still practical for your organization. Are they value added operations, or once were and now are waste? You management group decides that.
Christian has given some good examples of measuring system effectiveness. You may want to ask senior management about other measures that they may like to see. This creates better buy in at these meetings. Other results of system effectiveness comes from Internal Quality Audits, where 'compliance' to your Quality Program is reviewed. Compliance audits determine how well you stick to the program. Another good point brought up by Christian is 'system ineffectiveness'. These are generally measures of nonconformance, the problems, where action plans or action plan committees can be determined during management review. I personally like to keep a balance (not necessarily 50/50) of problems and successes. If you heavily skew the mix of the meeting to either side, you end up having a Pep Rally or a Gripe Session (neither are really productive).
Regards, Kevin
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[This message has been edited by Kevin Mader (edited 03-03-99).]