Open Positions During AS9100 Audit

[lipeamos]

Hello,

Most of our SOP's have who are responsible for the processes described in the SOP. However we currently don't have a Quality Manager or a Buyer. However those roles and responsibilities have been distributed so they are being met. My question is, when we get our surveillance audit is underway and our SOP's says the buyer is suppose to maintain the ASL or the Quality Manager is suppose to be in charge of maintenance of Calibrated equipment, but we dont have those positions filled. Will we be written up? and whats a way not to get written up, besides filling those positions? I thought of documenting who is charge of the responsibilities? is that necessary?

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Obviously, as long people doing the job can demonstrate competence in doing so, the CB auditor should have no issues, but, be aware, chances are this redistribution of responsibilities might become permanent. The boss might think: We went through an audit and got zero nonconformities, why should I hire replacements?

 

[Ninja]

We had a single, general, high level document stating the upward flow of responsibilities...

Every supervisor was responsible (perhaps not trained yet) for all tasks of all employees and positions reporting to them, and reporting to them, and on and on.
This ensured that if a position was empty, there was still a record of who present was responsible...if everyone was missing, it would be the President or CEO...all flowed up automatically.
A simple record of delegation to someone else (even if not in direct chain) was all it took to assign the task/responsibility to someone who was present.
Never had a finding anywhere around that... just don't forget that assigning responsibility and training and competence are three different things...
HTH

 

[Tagin]

We had a single, general, high level document stating the upward flow of responsibilities...

Every supervisor was responsible (perhaps not trained yet) for all tasks of all employees and positions reporting to them, and reporting to them, and on and on.
This ensured that if a position was empty, there was still a record of who present was responsible...if everyone was missing, it would be the President or CEO...all flowed up automatically.
A simple record of delegation to someone else (even if not in direct chain) was all it took to assign the task/responsibility to someone who was present.
Never had a finding anywhere around that... just don't forget that assigning responsibility and training and competence are three different things...
HTH

This makes a lot of sense, it is straightforward, and is something I now realize I should add; it makes it explicit that vacant roles do not permit abandonment of responsibility.