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I'm having a crisis of faith in the way the quality management system is certified and implemented in some instances.
The company I work for have 6 sites across the country and all are now certified to 9001. However, they often receive non-conformance in surveillance audits and from all accounts and purposes don't seem to action them.
Specifically, the company has never conducted internal audits. They always plan to, but they never happen. I'm currently in the process of rejuvenating the QMS, but because there is a lack of understanding on what the quality management system is and how it should be integrated into the business, it's seen as a separate entity and something that we do to comply with an audit, rather than as a tool to improve business.
I'm trying to get across to senior management that have 1 trained auditor in a national company (me) is not enough to fully conduct value adding audits of key business processes, and as I am responsible for building the QMS/EMS/SMS, it isn't practical to have me audit my own work. However senior management claim that they have always been compliant to the standard in the past without the need for an audit team or process auditing, so why start now.
I'd like to grab some expert opinions on whether this is a common issue, and whether ISO9001 certification really means anything if it can be granted and maintained when the business really has not integrated a quality management system into their business and does not utilize it for continuous improvement.
The company I work for have 6 sites across the country and all are now certified to 9001. However, they often receive non-conformance in surveillance audits and from all accounts and purposes don't seem to action them.
Specifically, the company has never conducted internal audits. They always plan to, but they never happen. I'm currently in the process of rejuvenating the QMS, but because there is a lack of understanding on what the quality management system is and how it should be integrated into the business, it's seen as a separate entity and something that we do to comply with an audit, rather than as a tool to improve business.
I'm trying to get across to senior management that have 1 trained auditor in a national company (me) is not enough to fully conduct value adding audits of key business processes, and as I am responsible for building the QMS/EMS/SMS, it isn't practical to have me audit my own work. However senior management claim that they have always been compliant to the standard in the past without the need for an audit team or process auditing, so why start now.
I'd like to grab some expert opinions on whether this is a common issue, and whether ISO9001 certification really means anything if it can be granted and maintained when the business really has not integrated a quality management system into their business and does not utilize it for continuous improvement.