Hey guys,
Just need a little help. from some research online some companies seem to follow the requirements document to the letter. Especially when it comes to the titles etc. Is this necessary? or can your own titles be created. so for example we are providing a service (managing companies records) so can it be ‘service realisation’ and have under that section collection and delivery of records?
Any help greatly appreciated
Such an approach comes from the idea of ‘say whay you do, do what you say’, and creating quality systems to pass audits. ISO 9001 is simply a set of requirements affecting various aspects of an organization.
People choose to use the same titles simply because it’s painless and it’ll pass an audit. And that’s where a lot of confusion sets in. Who the heck calls their core business processes ‘Product Realization’?? But many folks’ quality manuals label them that…The true users of the system are already at a disadvantage since the terminology is odd.
So, call the processes what your people are happiest with. Make sure they don’t ‘bend’ things to suit a poor practice/lack of understanding - but please make a matrix of how your system meets the ISO requirements, otherwise the auditor may have difficulty…
We get lots and lots of inquiries from folks who are “scared spitless” that their documentation isn’t “according to ISO.”
Luckily, most third party auditors (registrars who grant certificates of registration to an ISO Standard) are a lot more savvy today than back in the 90’s when we were working to ISO’s 1994 version. They understand documentation, especially titles and headings within the document, must first serve the business purpose of the organization and be readable and understandable by the folks who actually use the document. I can tell you from experience most employees of manufacturing organizations, regardless of education level, would be hard put to define the term “product realization.”
The problem gets a little tricky with second party auditors (customers) who are NOT as smart, savvy, and experienced as most third party auditors. These folks sometimes can’t understand that “making a widget” might mean the same as “product realization” and find they can’t match supplier documents to the little “cheat sheet” list they carry.
Because it gets a little tiresome for suppliers to continually make verbal explanations to these numb nut auditors, many of them have resorted to making the document headings and titles match the ISO document and section headings of Standards word-for-word.
There is an alternate which serves BOTH the issue of organization employees understanding and the clueless auditor matching his cheat sheet:
Create a “comparison grid” matching your titles and headings with the ISO ones for the benefit of the clueless auditor so he can follow his cheat sheet and thus employees need never be subjected to figuring out what “product realization” or some other arcane term means. It’s a little more work on the front end for you, but often saves a lot of time and grief during an audit by an idiot who holds the key to your organization’s profit in his chubby little fingers.
ISO 9001 helps you to run your business more efficiently and effectively as well as to achieve customer satisfaction by meet your customers requirements. ISO 9001 also helps to control company in more systematic way and ensure continual improvement through the corrective and preventive actions.