10 Questions and Answers, Before You Hire a Consultant

How do you tell the difference? Before you hire ISO 9000 consulting help, here are questions to ask ISO 9001 consultants. (These questions are relevant to consultants for ISO 14000, AS9100, etc.). The consultant who gives you the best answers is the one for you!

1: How much will it cost us to get ready for ISO 9001, AS9100,or ISO 14000 registration?

A reputable consultant will give you a range based on the amount of time they estimate, through experience, the process will take.

2: How long does it take to get ISO 9001 set up and ready for registration?

Again, a reputable consultant will give you a range of time. Ask for references to back up any claims made concerning time lines and success.

3: What Standard will you help us work toward?

Make sure your consultant is versed in the current standards and can explain to your satisfaction which Standard fits you best. The right consultant is so fluent in all these technical details that he or she will be able to guide you with confidence and complete credibility.

4: How much do we have to pay up front?

Reputable consultants may ask for a small advance for the first visit or progress payments as the project meets certain milestones.

5: Who will be the lead consultant on our project?

Accept nothing less than to meet and interview the person who will actually be working with you on an ongoing basis - Before you hire the consulting firm.

6: What do you charge for phone consultation during, and after, the project?

The answer had better be "not one red cent."

7: What registration firms are you tied to?

The acceptable answer is "None." A reputable consultant is 100% independent, with no fiduciary or corporate relationship with any registration firm.

8: Will you be present during our registration audit?

That option is up to you and should be considered part of the closeout to the project, (Not an additional cost to you). Keep in mind, the consultant cannot help you during a registration audit; the assessors will not allow any participation on the consultant’s part.

9: What will you charge to help us deal with noncompliances found during our registration audit?

The answer is Zero, not one penny. This should be part of the closeout of the project, not an additional cost.

10: How often will you have to come back to help us keep up our system after we are registered?

The answer should be, "Not ever." A reputable consultant works hard to ensure that you fully own your quality management system at the time of registration.

^{What are the benefits of implementing an effective QMS based on the ISO 9001:2008 standard?}

Benefits include:

External

Improves customer satisfaction due to an organization's QMS capability and consistency in meeting requirements.
Improves conformity to quality requirements
Increases competitive edge and market share
Increasingly recognized as a requirement for contractual relationships in the global arena.

Internal

Improves business efficiency and productivity
Reduces organizational waste, inefficiencies, and defects
Facilitates continual improvement in business processes and customer satisfaction
Improves process consistency and stability
Facilitates employee competence and consistency of performance
Improves employee motivation and empowerment through improved participation, communication and interaction.
Generates objective evidence to support the assessment of QMS conformity and effectiveness
Improves supplier performance by developing relationships that foster cooperative interaction in understanding and fulfilling customer requirements.

Myths, Urban Legends, and Perceptions

Everyone has their interpretation of the ISO 9001 standard. Let’s discuss some common misunderstandings, some of these myths, urban legends or perceptions of different requirements that may still exist:

Myth: Implementing and maintaining ISO 9001 is expensive.

False: it does not have to be expensive. A company simply needs to document its management system based on what it already does and put in place the programs required to improve on them.

Urban Legend: The ISO 9001 system is a quality system (belongs in the quality department or is the responsibility of the quality manager), or many organizations feel they need to hire somebody full time to manage the ISO 9001 system (for example, internal audit coordinator, corrective action coordinator, ISO coordinator).

False: the ISO 9001 system covers an entire business, starting with customer requirements, review and acceptance of those requirements, executing those requirements, measuring and monitoring processes to ensure requirements are being met and then, ultimately, delivery of a product or service that meets those requirements to ensure customer satisfaction.

Perception: a quality manual has to plagiarize the ISO 9001 standard.

False: the ISO 9001 standard states, “The organization shall establish and maintain a quality manual that includes:
The scope of the quality management system, including details of and justification for any exclusions,
The documented procedures established for the quality management system, or reference to them, and
A description of the interaction between the processes of the quality management system.”

Perception: it is mandatory to have a document—for example, work instruction, flow chart, procedure—for every process in the company.

False: ISO 9001 states, “NOTE 2 of the standard, the extent of the documentation can differ from one organization to another due to the size of organization and type of activities, the complexity of processes and their interactions, and the competence of personnel."

This is just a short list of reasons why organizations struggle with ISO 9001 implementation. Do you have some of these myths, urban legends, misconceptions in your organization?

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ISO 9001 and AS9100 Help Forum

FRIDAY, MAR. 05, 2010

New post - My Customer Wants Us Certified to AS9100, HELP!

You are a small business owner who has just been told you must become certified to AS9100 in order to continue to receive business from your largest customer. You have been putting this off for some time, hoping you would be able to wait until the economy gets better. Now what, you have a deadline and you haven’t got a clue how to get there from here? The best advice, find a competent consultant and get some training to the standard.

Those organizations who recruit good consultants get the job done roughly twice as fast. By helping you avoid mistakes, a good consultant can help you get the job done faster. But only a good consultant can do this. Not all consultants are created equally, and it is important to select a consultant that is right for you. A reputable consultant works hard to ensure that you fully own your quality management system at the time of registration. Key services you will require, if you have no idea what you are doing or how you will do it are as follows:

1. Required documentation development and implementation

2. Training: Quality policy and objectives, Management review, Corrective and Preventive action, Internal auditing, AS9100 Overview, Risk analysis, Overview of the Complete QMS, Collecting and analyzing data.

3. If software is being used to facilitate and run your quality system, you will also need training and implementation services for this.

4. Implementation of a competency, awareness and training program, internal audit, corrective and preventive action programs, management review and overall continual improvement programs.

5. Conduct internal audits for entire system (all processes), one high level internal audit to the AS9101C checklist in preparation for registration audit.

This is just a short list of services that you may need to accomplish your goal of certification to AS9100. Depending on the size and complexity of your organization and processes more may be needed. A good consultant can help you determine your individual needs.

Posted by Administrator at 9:40 AM

SATURDAY, NOV. 14, 2009

Focus on Sustained Success ISO 9004

Why the new focus on "sustained success? ISO 9004 is trying to answer the question, what is the purpose of quality? In 2000, the standard looked at customer requirements in the widest possible sense. Now with the 2009 rewrite, it is addressing why you should do that. The answer to this: to achieve sustained success for an organization over the long term.

Does the new direction of ISO 9004 indicate the future direction of ISO 9001? Quite possibly yes, ISO 9001 has to be written to provide consistent objective assessment across different organizations, but ISO 9004 calls for subjectivity. Wherever we can transfer the subjective advice in ISO 9004 into ISO 9001 in the future, it will probably be done.

For a small business to survive in the current economy, sustained success is a driving force that can sometimes determine whether or not an organization will survive. Although this standard is not intended for certification purposes, a strong business management consultant can assist an organization, which is already ISO 9001 certified, by coaching them on how to implement this standard.

Posted by Administrator at 8:07 AM

TUESDAY, NOV. 03, 2009

ISO 9001 Corrective vs. Preventive Action

Corrective and Preventive Action Processes are two different processes within ISO 9001 requirements.

There is a great deal of confusion between the 3 areas covered under the ISO 9001 standard, corrective action, preventive action and preventive maintenance.

Corrective action treats a nonconformity or problem that has already occurred. The problem exists. The nonconformity lives and needs to be addressed.

Preventive maintenance focuses on the care of machines. It is a system that protects machines from breaking down. ISO 9001 auditors do not look at preventive maintenance as preventive action. Preventive maintenance is important for the infrastructure (resource management) section of the ISO 9001 standard.

Preventive action determines and eliminates potential causes of non conformities. This means the non conformity has not yet happen. If you act to prevent a problem from occurring then this is a preventive action. The ISO 9001 standard requires you to take preventive action to eliminate potential nonconformities.

There are ISO 9001 software applications that can help guide an organization through this murky area within the ISO standard. A certified CIS consultant can show an organization just how simple it is to report, track and follow-up on corrective and preventive actions. If that’s not enough, there are also ISO 9001 templates available to help clarify the standard requirements for these and other areas of your business management system. So if you are looking to start a new quality management system, or just take your old system and reengineer your process to promote continual improvement, help is not far away.

Posted by Administrator at 9:11 AM

SATURDAY, OCT. 31, 2009

Are Your Suppliers Meeting The Requirements Of ISO 9001:2008?

There are various ways in which your supplier can claim that its quality management system meets the requirements of ISO 9001:2008. These include:

Supplier's declaration of conformity: Your supplier makes a declaration affirming that its QMS meets ISO 9001:2008 requirements, usually supported by legally-binding signatures. This declaration can be based on your supplier's internal audit system, or on second party or third party audits;
Second party assessment: your supplier is audited directly by its customer (e.g., by you, or by another customer, whose reputation you respect) to check if its QMS meets ISO 9001:2008 requirements and your own requirements - sometimes used in contractual "business-to-business" transactions;
Third party certification: your supplier uses an accredited Certification Body (Registrar) to audit and verify it's conformity to ISO 9001:2008 requirements. This third party then issues a certificate to your supplier describing the scope of its QMS, and confirming that it conforms to ISO 9001:2008.

Posted by Administrator at 5:23 PM

SATURDAY, OCT. 31, 2009

AS9100 A Change is Coming

The goal of the AS9101 rewrite is to provide requirements on process auditing and development of the AS9100 audit approaches and tools that focus not only on conformity, but also on effectiveness of a quality management system (QMS). The AS9101 proposal is to develop an enhanced audit process for evaluating process-based management systems that aligns with ISO 17021 and consists of:

Process-based information gathering.
Assessment or analysis and audit planning.
Development of performance-based and process-oriented audit methods and techniques.
The ability to capture objective evidence of process conformity and effectiveness.

The AS9101 Rev D has aligned itself with the process approach for quality management systems as indicated in the 9100-series of standards. There are four basic questions asked when evaluating quality management systems which is linked to each process which is being audited:

is the process identified and appropriately defined?
are the responsibilities assigned?
are the procedures implemented and maintained?
is the process effective in achieving the desired results?

Posted by Administrator at 5:12 PM

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