Category Archives: Leadership

Certification, Events, Improvement, Leadership, Quality Tools

Sunday Summary

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Here’s a look at the week gone by.

This week’s “Toolsday” brought us a tutorial on how to create a Pareto chart using Excel 2013, which may be helpful to some of you. You’ll find how to create one in other versions of Excel with a little Google-fu, but ours may be the only currently available for the latest version.

That was the extent of the formal posts this week, excepting tweets and Facebook updates. A large part of my week was occupied with a reCertification audit. This is, by the way, what happens after two yearly “surveillance audits” – you may remember we covered the audit cycle in an earlier post.

This company was actually very good – one of the better implementations I’ve seen as a point of fact. Thought I would spend a few moments listing a few bullet points on why this is so.

  • First, it’s a long-time implementation; they started their journey, albeit in a slightly different structural form, in the mid-nineties. That would have been the 1994 version of the standard. So, in a word, Experience.
  • Secondly, they have strong quality system leadership; a competent and vocal Management Representative who enjoys the technical and practical respect of those around him. Call that, summarily, Stewardship. This differs slightly from leadership, which some may call this and they would be still correct, if imprecise – in that a steward also helps operate the machine and knows how it works. It is vitally important that the leadership support the system, and that is truly a component of Stewardship and something at which this particular company also excels.
  • Thirdly, there is little difference between how seriously the formal management system is taken at the different levels of the organization. Soldier and general alike reference and follow the established processes and are actively concerned with improving them. Let’s call this Cultural Integration.

Most companies have some or all of these, and other nice-to-have’s, to varying degrees – but these folks are rock solid, “Best in Show” in each of these three. So, three keys to a successful, world class formal management system implementation: Experience, Stewardship, and Cultural Integration.

Would like also to make mention of another activity from the week, a meeting of the Granite State Quality Council. I’m planning on a dedicated post about the Council, but this event made recognition of two outstanding New Hampshire organizations.

There were presentations on these organizations’ best practices and lessons learned to help audience members improve their own organizations. Part of the night was devoted to recognizing the dedicated Examiners and Judges who participated in the program. It was my first experience with the Granite State Quality Council and I do hope to become more involved.

Looking forward to three audits next week: California, Massachusetts and good ol’ New Hampshire.

And I do hope you have a fulfilling week as well. Get some rest.

Sal

 

 

9001:2015, Improvement, Leadership, Quality Tools

Sunday Summary – 8 Sept., ’13

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Hey – Hope you’re having a great weekend. This week there will be no talk of rice bowls – and I’ll get right to a recap.

Behind the scenes, some updates to the security of the website (no, I am not throwing down the gauntlet!).

Also Investigated ways to make some ad revenue (very hard for me not to click my own links!) Costs money to keep these lights on and at this point maybe three people are reading this so – I know, “math is hard”. If you ever need anything from Amazon, the easiest way for you to help, is to enter Amazon using any link from this site – their search bar at right is handy. I know, advertisements are tedious. Welcome to America!

Oh, and working on getting a few podcasts up! I’m pretty excited about that.

Have yourself a great rest of the weekend, as well as a fine week. Drop me a message if you’d like something covered.

Thanks and go forth and calibrate thyself – tomorrow; take a day off from calibrating.

Sal

9001:2015, Improvement, ISO 9001, Leadership

“Leadership” – 9001:2015 Draft of Section 5

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Leadership: The art of getting someone else
to do something you want done
because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

ISO 9001:2015 has an entirely new layout and some new content. A few weeks ago, we looked at section 4, “Context“. Continuing along in the series, here’s a look at the next section.

ISO 9001:2015 Draft – Section 5 “Leadership”

The entire section borders on an exercise in semantics as this concept is an offshoot of the previous version’s “Management Commitment”, at least as a starting point. There are some definite differences though, so I wouldn’t gloss over it.

Leadership Section 5The section starts out with “Leadership and commitment” and that it shall be demonstrated. One might ask how – well, specifically by eight methods. I’ve decided not to hash into the three that already exist (almost verbatim) as requirements in ISO 9001:2008, but there are a few differences or at least accentuations of previous focus:

  • Promoting awareness of the process approach. An interesting one there. Auditors would expect some level of training. Will likely be a valuable debate as to the difference between “awareness” and “training”. This is an important distinction, because if it is training, then there has to be some measure of training effectiveness.
  • Ensuring that the quality management system achieves its intended outputs. Not exactly new, but it does highlight the focus on the process approach. It implies the outputs have to be defined.
  • Engaging, directing and supporting persons to contribute to the effectiveness of the quality management system. This should be interesting from an audit perspective; some kind of evidence will need to be present.
  • Promoting continual improvement and innovation. I get a small kick out of this one, because it mentions “continual improvement” – when the word “continual” has been stricken from the gospel in the 2015 version. Ultimately, I expect this to read “Promoting improvement and innovation”… and “innovation”? I’m as interested as you are in what one might look for to show innovation. Benchmarking? Innovation in what context? There are some business models that thrive on creating for the status quo. Questions that I hope the next draft iron out.
  • Supporting other relevant management roles to demonstrate their leadership as it applies to their areas of responsibility. This is referring to a pass-down effect to avoid islands of leadership within the larger organization.

The next subsection is “Leadership and commitment with respect to the needs and expectations of customers”.

Two main concepts here, “customer focus” and “risks”- both are combined to address the determination of customer requirements including any applicable statutory and regulatory requirements, as well as enhancing customer satisfaction by meeting them.

Really, other than risk – which is more deeply ingrained in another section – not too different than what exists.

Quality policy is within element 5, no big surprises with regard to content. Let’s not worry about it for now.

And lastly, the section contains “organizational roles, responsibilities and authorities” again, nothing new here, other than a focus on intended outputs. Very much an expansion of the old section 5.5 with a few related consolidations from other sections.

There you have it, a quick summary of what is currently in the draft of the next version of ISO 9001. Naturally, the content of the draft is likely to change to some degree, so I wouldn’t make too many changes to your current system or documentation. But it does give a good indicator of what direction the standard is going toward, namely one of simplicity and consistency. How far it gets in that endeavor, remains to be seen.

Thanks for following along – go forth now, and calibrate thyself.
Sal