Craig Ottaway led a valuable and lively conversation, sharing the insights he’d gained from steering the company he works for through to Certification to the 2015 version of ISO 9001, particularly around what complying with Clause 4 (Context of the Organisation) entails. Craig stressed the need to focus on what’s important to the organisation and to clearly define the boundary of the Management System, and the need to ‘plan the upgrade plan’. For example, to be considered, parties must both interested and relevant to the purpose of the organisation; there are many parties who are interested but not sufficiently relevant to be considered. And which parties are relevant and interested depends on where the organisation is in the maturity cycle; arguably the organisation’s staff are much more critical for a start-up than for a mature business; however always crucial to a successful output.
One insight was the need to train the organisation’s leadership to understand the key changes in the 2015 Standard, and for this training to include those in second tier, as ongoing organisational changes mean some of them will be in the top leadership roles at the time of the audit.
Key advice: Obtain and thoroughly absorb ISO TS 9002:2017 “QMS Guidelines for the Application of ISO 9001:2015” (as well as the Standard!).
Another highlight of this Cafe Quality was two new faces: Ian Cowan, Australian Federal Police, Canberra, who we met at Qualcon 2016 – Ian noticed this event on the Website/Newsletter and scheduled his visit to Adelaide to coincide, thus underscoring the importance of having these events promoted in good time; and John Beynon, a new AOQ member who recently emigrated to Adelaide from the UK.
AOQ is your Quality Organisation
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