Congratulations! You are now in charge of creating an ISO 9001 system – now what?

Archive for the ‘Environmental, Health and Safety’ Category

Quite often, the Kayzed Consultant staff is asked to recommend a plan of action for people who find themselves in the position of “being volunteered” to put together an ISO 9001 (or any other ISO 9001-based standard) system for their company. Unfortunately, for employees that have little to no experience with quality standards, this can be an overwhelming task. We recommend the following steps:

Step 1 – Before you can plan what to do, you and the management team need to know what is required. Start with an overview training session on the standard for yourself followed by a session for top management. Strongly emphasize that the standard is process based and highlight the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model. All parties involved in the implementation must realize that the standard has a couple of key principles that are referenced all throughout the standard – customer satisfaction and continual improvement. The ultimate goal is to make all customers happy, but the method of getting to that goal is by the continual improvement of your processes. This is where top management needs to make a little paradigm shift – customer satisfaction means more than a reduction in phone calls from the customer yelling about something that wasn’t just right. It certainly means more than assuming a customer is happy if they continue to give orders for more products and services. Remember, customers can multi-task by giving your organization a new purchase order while giving a new supplier the thumbs up for the next order. By the time some realize the customer isn’t happy, it can be too late.

This is where continual improvement comes into play. By knowing what your customers think of the level of service and value they receive from your organization, your company can initiate the proper continual improvement objectives that can reduce or eliminate the problems and issues that can make their way to the customer.

This is why you need to get all of top management involved. Everyone must get a clear view of the big picture. Having a quality management system (QMS) based on the appropriate ISO standard should become the implementation of a quality philosophy and roadmap for doing things right. Stress that it is a quality management system by which the company will operate and oh, by the way, it just happens to comply with the ISO standard. After that, don’t mention the letters “ISO” – just QMS. Companies that implement systems based on the need to meet ISO requirements often find that employees put an emphasis on doing things just to meet the standard as opposed to improving the process.

Environmental reporting not keeping you busy enough? Get ready for Greenhouse Gas reporting!

It was only a matter of time – and the time has arrived.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to establish a nationwide system for reporting GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions. It is a program that could serve as the basis for a federal cap on the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming.

The registry plan would cover about 13,000 facilities that account for 85 to 90 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas output.

The plan will be adopted by the end of the year and greenhouse gas statistics will be available by the end of 2010. The EPA requirements would apply to large industrial sources that emit 25,000 metric tons or more a year, including oil and chemical refineries; cement, glass, pulp and paper plants; manufacturers of motor vehicles and engines; and confined animal-feeding operations. In addition to carbon dioxide, emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases would have to be reported.

The good news is that most small businesses would fall well below the threshold and would not be required to report, EPA officials said.

New (or maybe rumored) Corrective and Preventive Action requirements! Make sure your system is up to speed!

In order to accommodate the rumored additional changes to ISO 9001:2008, you will need to incorporate the following form into your organizations Corrective and Preventive Action system. It is also rumored that these requirements will affect additional standards such as ISO/TS 16949, ISO 14001, AS9100, ISO 13485, ISO 22000 and various other standards.

Identifying Environmental Aspects for ISO 14001

During ISO 14001 implementation, the most important exercise a company will go through is identifying all possible environmental aspects. Without a proper and thorough examination of all processes, functions and grounds of a facility, the rest of the environmental management system (EMS) is an exercise in meaningless documentation.

Once all aspects are identified, a determination must be made as to what aspects are significant and if they are within the organizations ability to control. This is best conducted through some type of risk analysis format such as a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) type review of the aspects.

If the process of identifying all environmental aspects of your company’s activities is becoming a daunting task due to limited or stretched resources, contact the experts at Kayzed consultants today!