Think about clause 8.3.4 Design and Development Controls within ISO9001:2015 as the Check section of the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) loop. In earlier clauses of section 8.3 – (Design & Development of Products & Services) the organisation was required to carry out some detailed design & development planning and to look at the assorted input...

You have done all the hard work, you have figured out the purpose of your organisation, you have a vision for the future and are clear about your mission and you have developed your three sets of values (permission to play, core & aspirational) and they are all great values! Since everyone is aware these things and you talk about your values al...

In this second part of the discussion about ISO9001:2015 Section 8.3 we are going to look at section 8.3.3 of ISO9001:2015 which is all about the Design & Development Inputs to your product or service. The aim of this clause is simple, lets make sure you have considered everything you need to when designing your product or service  8.3.3 D...

Every organisation has challenges and areas where they need to improve, even the very best of them. The challenge is always figuring out what to work on and what not to work on or putting it in another way what are the Good things to work on and what are the Great things to work on. The aim is to only work on the great things rather than just work ...

ISO9001:2015 Clause 8.3 is all about how your organisation carries out it's design and development of products and services. Now obviously if you do not actually carry out any design or development work then this section is not applicable to you and you are allowed to exclude it from your ISO9001:2015 system, however your request for exclusion will...

It's been a busy time of it of late balancing commitments at work and at home. Between on-boarding some really exciting new clients, working with our existing clients on some really interesting challenges, of course the obligatory paperwork elements and developing a great new Lean Administration workshop as well it's all go. Then of course there is...

My daughter is 9, I joke that she's 9 going on 19! There are many reasons I'm proud of my daughter, too many to list here but her inquisativeness is fantastic and when I started the I actually got her busienss cards made saying "Trainee Big Boss" as a bit of a joke but she's taken a keen interest in things as we went along. So I want to share ...

When we get the call from new or even existing clients eager to start their lean journey they are always desperate to get started. They have heard from friends, colleagues, industry bodies and magazine articles what it is all about and so they know what they have to do and so just want to get started. Invariably however, when we ask what their...

Value stream mapping is a phrase that gets banded around in lean quite a lot, "Oh you should map that process" "have you VSM'd that?" and a hold host of other phrases (I quite like to ask if "you have mapped the value of a process" or variations on that). You will hear it in pretty much any lean organisation or an organisation with aspirations to b...

One of the questions I get asked a lot about ISO9001:2015 is what they heck is the difference between a Process, a procedure and Work Instructions (sometimes also called Standard Operating Procedures). It's surprising how much gnashing of teeth, squabbling among teams and dents in office walls this issue causes, so here is you nice and simple break...

We don't want managers, we want leaders! We hear and see that phrase or something similar to that a lot. In fact, so often it's now one of those throwaway lines that it's now just seen as spin, something that organisations say to sound good. But what if an organisation really meant it, what would that look like? What if, Leader was an actual title ...

Often you will hear an organisation talk about being 'lean' they have lean processes, they have driven down the waste in their systems, they have 5s and Kanban's and management by walking around, everyone is clear on the goal and so many more great things happening, in their manufacturing area. Yet take 10 steps into their offices, their servi...

How often have you got into the manufacture or design of a product and realise that you really don't either understand exactly what you should be making or that you are not capable of making it? ISO9001:2015 clause 8.2 Requirements for Products and Services is really aimed at avoiding this situation from happening. It's important then, that you do ...

Over the last 10 or 12 years the term "True North", sometimes referred to as "North Star" has gradually become more of a talking point in lean circles. Now it's is increasingly cropping up in conversations around NZ lean and continuous improvement circles as well. So what is "True North", how can you find it, communicate it and use it and should yo...

If you think about the first 7 clauses of the ISO9001:2015 as building the framework of your Quality Management System then section 8 - Operation is very much about putting some substance on that framework. Section 8.1 - Operational Planning and Control, that we will discuss here, gives the requirements for the organsiation to put into place the&nb...

When I talk with organisations about forecasting most tell me it's not possible in their industry, their customers don't know what they need so how are they ever going to know? That usually just code for our sales guys like to take orders rather than build relationships and understand the customer needs. Or they tell me they do this proce...

Clause 7.5 - Documented Information is a new section within the ISO9001:2015 standard, this section highlights what is required when creating and controlling documentation that is required to support your Quality Management System and the requirements have obviously changed since technology has moved on significantly since the last iterat...

When we were putting our website together we wanted to make it easy for clients to make a booking with use without lots of back and forth emails or phone calls to see if we had a slot at this time on this day. The answer, of course, was that we needed an online booking system. It needed to be something that fitted with our value of S...