On April 22, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day will be celebrated from coast-to-coast; a day which was first realized by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson who wanted to find a way to increase environmental awareness and to promote urgently needed federal legislation to deal with an alarming ecological crisis.It wasn’t until visiting Santa Barbara Calif in August, 1969, and reading about the popularity of “teach-ins” at college campuses as way of educating students about the Vietnam War that an idea caught hold in Nelson’s head to hold a similar “teach-ins” only with a focus on environmental awareness.Since the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, when a chorus of demonstrators around the nation some 20 million strong voiced their concerns about the environment, specifically about the pollution of air and water, that a significant amount of federal legislation was passed to protect the environment.

via The History Of Earth Day Plus How You Can Get Involved – Yahoo! News.

During a recent audit I got into a fascinating debate as to whether an organization is required to track their own on time delivery performance to their customer as part of the requirements to be ISO 9001 compliant. Now first of all, I feel I must preface the term “fascinating” with the fact that I have been working in the quality arena for more than 15 years, so at this point my concept of fascinating may not meet everyone expectations, but here goes.

Let me summarize the differing positions, the organization had interpreted the requirements of the standard as there was no need to internally measure on time delivery performance, their policy was that if a customer felt that a delivery had been late then they would react to that concern via their internal customer concern process. However if the client did not raise any concerns then the organizations expectation was that there were no issues from the customer. My point was that this didn’t meet the intent of clause 8.2.1, as on time delivery performance is a key component of gauging customer perception and that from a purely business stand point it is not a very pro-active stance to assume all is well unless an issue is raised. The possibility being that a customer could be consistently receiving parts that are not meeting their expectations with regards to delivery performance. If having raised the concern a number of times and the situation does not consistently improve, then their perception of the organization may have deteriorated to a point where they are shopping for a alternative supplier, without the current supplier being aware that an ongoing issues exists.

Now if you study the wording in clause 8.2.1, it does not exactly require that delivery performance be tracked, it is referenced in the notes but in my opinion it is not a requirement of this clause. However, clause 8.1 does state that the organization shall plan and implement the monitoring, measurement, analysis and improvement processes needed to demonstrate conformity to product requirements, if the customer considers delivery performance to be a product requirements does this clause require the internal measurement of delivery performance?

Of course there are a number of other factors that must be considered – what does the company produce, do they have monitoring activities in place that safeguard the customer? In my experience purchasing decisions are made based upon three basic criteria; Price, Quality and On time delivery performance. These are considered in varying ratios of importance depending upon the nature of the industry in which an organization operates. If on time delivery is a minor consideration to a customer then perhaps the regimented tracking of this is not so important to the management system, when it comes to management systems as we all know one size does not fit all, in the end the customer needs must be paramount. Unfortunately, deciphering what the needs are is not always as straight forward as it should be, but that’s another topic for different blog entry. I would be interested to read your comments on this subject and will respond to as many as possible.

As you should know by now, ISO 9001:2008 has been released and requires a transition from the ISO 9001:2000 standard. The new standard was released nearly one year ago (November 14, 2008). NQA, USA has conducted over 1,200 successful audits in North America to this revised standard since that point in time, with several thousands more completed amongst the global family of NQA clients. To date, the NQA, USA volume has peaked at nearly 250 certificates transitioned in a given month. As we approach the halfway mark in the transition period we have completed nearly 40% of the North American transitions required.

“Start as you mean to continue.”

That old (British) adage is so true, particularly for an internal auditor. The way in which an internal audit begins often sets the scene for the way audits, and the auditor, are perceived by those who are part of the audit as well as those looking on.

Most auditor candidates who attend Internal Quality Auditor Training courses are taught that there must be a formal opening meeting, with people from the organization seated around a table, where sign-in sheets are passed around and a lengthy agenda is discussed by the auditor. This agenda can list ten or more items, including whether safety equipment is necessary, matters of confidentiality, complaints handling and more.

via NQA, USA Articles – Internal Auditor Basics.