Quality for value adding or certification?

[Chennaiite]

I think there is some fuss here about the missed internal audit rather than the distorted, blemished, certification-minded perspective of the Top Management (in general). To my knowledge, it is not at all unusual to have a Top Management who see QMS as a mere Certification program.

I would largely attribute this failure to the Quality and Auditor fraternity who sometimes (or many times) make issue out of a non-issue, philosophy out of common-sense, jargon out of a substance and document out of every thing, which is often in complete isolation from ground reality. Such things happen at varied levels of absurdity and deflate the value QMS can bring to the Organization sending a wrong message to the Top Management. Therefore, Certification wins over value addition.

 

[Andrej]

I think that Chenalite is right that certification wins over value addition. This is so because compliance to a standard like ISO 9001 (proven by certificate) is sometimes required if organization wants to participate in supply chain. Thus compliance will ensure compatibility of processes in supply chain. Top management usually trust Quality manager and his/hers team are capable of obtaining and keeping certificate. In order to add value to products/services and processes, QM should convince top management that he/she and the team are capable to deliver improvements of perceived value by customers and improvements in processes that will significantly reduce costs to the organization. And not to forget, improvement in products and processes often require some investment that should be justified to top management. With justification of improvement project it is much easier to convince top management to grant such projects.

 

[AndyN]

Let's also not forget the true purpose of certification of a management system: To indicate to a customer of the organization that their (potential) supplier(s) have established and implemented a management system which complies to a known (ISO) standard. If you spent any time in the supply chain and had to deal with a supplier who couldn't even spell "process control" or "calibration" etc. you'd know the value of not having to spend time to help them develop basic "blocking and tackling" controls to give YOURSELF confidence you might receive some conforming spec parts.

When you have a group of engineers who like to select supplier for new products and ALL you can do it tell them "find someone with an ISO certificate at least", then it's a pretty good place to start... THAT'S value!

 

[lk2012]

So, it turns out the previous quality coordinator had been conducting audits at each site. However they were using a basic compliance checklist that asked questions like:

Confirm that documents are on letter-headed paper.

Confirm meetings are being conducted

Confirm records are maintained

These were all maintained in paper-format in a cabinet elsewhere which is why everybody had a hard time finding them.

I am proposing a process audit approach so that we can actually add value to the business by auditing, rather than ticking boxes for the sake of it.

Thanks for all of the advice.

Blimey that's a strong one out of the book of poor QMS examples
Definitely go for your process audit approach and persist in your effort. And have your CV ('resume') ready just in case: