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What should ISO mean to you?

The International Standards Organization (ISO) in Geneva has compiled best practices for organizational management and publishes them as International Quality Standards.

The most world-wide applicable Standard is ISO-9001:2000. So?

ISO registered companies have a better chance at giving you and yours the job security to make your dreams come true over time.

Companies registered to ISO contract with a Registrar for 3 years to audit and confirm they are focused on meeting customer requirements and they measure themselves for continual improvement, effective internal communications, effective training, effective process control, and especially, effective customer satisfaction!

Buying from ISO registered companies kind of tips the scale that you will receive product or service that is fit for your use and gets better over time. Of course, no company is perfect all the time, but ISO companies have less delivery problems and the ISO Corrective Action and Internal Audit tools effectively attack problems with a bias for prevention. Your customers have buyers who need to look good by investing in you.

Think for a minute what went wrong around your company in the last 90 days. Just like the evening news, it is probably the same kind of events happening again and again, just to different people. What happens to control or eliminate recurring problems? ISO registered companies teach employees how to react to unexpected events. Employees are taught to use their experience and judgment to receive well, or reject and document the incident for management intervention, do their job well, and inspect well prior to release to prevent someone from rejecting and documenting. Companies that adopt such a concept find that crisis management quickly drops. Unexpected costs to respond to a crisis never get spent. Target profit margins are now achieved. All in 6 weeks, or less!

Working in an ISO company can be a blessing or a curse. If you are a solid performer needing recognition for steady good work, you will love performing well during internal audits. If you are coasting along and not caring much for the quality of your work, you will hate ISO for bringing the spotlight of nonconformance to you. You see, after every audit finding, management will retrain you on what you should have known AND send another auditor later to confirm the effectiveness of your re-training. ISO is not a hammer, just an effective measuring device seeking folks who are doing well. Everyone gets to manage their work by receiving well, doing well, and releasing well to meet customer requirements on time, every time. Is there anything else?

There is a curse when management responds to ISO with excessive procedures and work instructions and forms. Heck, you may have bulging binders on the shelf before ISO! The curse of such documentation is ineffectiveness over time. Too many procedures cannot be absorbed by new hires. Too many work instructions take forever to audit (oh, if auditing is ever done). Time consuming audits find dozens and dozens of nonconforming incidents that take days and days to resolve. Believe me, there are hundreds of ISO registered companies out there that are cursed with excessive documentation that is mostly ineffective. It does not have to be that way.

Brand new ISO companies need to start with an enterprise approach to documentation. Because the current ISO-9000 Standard requires old users to migrate to it when their certificate expires and the new Standard is modeled as an enterprise approach, renewal companies can lean down for effectiveness. Respond to the Standards requirements with procedures that all departments shall follow. Simplify the procedures by using flowcharts. Try to refer to an employees experience and judgment inside procedures instead of having another work instruction. After all, they have been doing their job for some time. Should an unacceptable release occur, you will have a system to identify a need for re-training. ISO registration readiness does not have to be an paperwork menace!

What should ISO mean to you? If you are a Sales Rep, you will have a competitive edge with your buyers. If you are the President, you will see under achieving profit margins come back to plan. If you are a Quality Manager, you can now have a life without excessive overtime, worry and customer butt chewing. If you are a Human Resources Manager, you can measure training effectiveness for the first time and relate training to improved company performance. If you are a Worker Bee, you are now the quality manager of your job with power to stop unacceptable incoming work. If you are a slacker, now is the time to move on to a new company and hope they don't go ISO too.

Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com, specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, Skills Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at 1-877-554-7831 or by emai l. The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to 1500 employees.

Tips to avoid process improvement obstacles

One of the great Registrar questions I ever heard was, In the last 60 days, has anything gone wrong around here? Of course, the employee was eager to spout out the dozens of incidents that were rememberable because they keep happening month in and month out. The question was really the first of two. The second one was, What have you done about it? The Registrar was testing how well management had communicated to all employees their responsibility to continually improve quality assurance. NOTE: the pat answer for question two is, I follow the procedure for reporting nonconforming incidents. Want to see the Log?

The lesson here is process improvement is launched well when individuals know and are allowed to use the expected tools when the unexpected happens. Under ISO, the internal auditors test for cases where employees are, or are not, using the expected tools. One company president, John Musat, of MascoTech Braun, now Metaldyne, was musing at a staff meeting one day, I'll know we have accepted the Quality Management System when employees start using our process improvement tools.

During a Registration Audit, the NSF Registrar, Leonard Shaw, asked the client, "I see where you are documenting the major problems in your Corrective Action Log, but how are you addressing the little oops?" The client had that universal deer-in-the-headlights look with no answer. We had to make a new procedure called Control of Nonconforming Incidents with a quality record log where employees could enter data whenever they received suspect or nonconforming work. Obviously, all were trained on the new procedure and audits confirmed employees were using it. For the first time, the organization could measure how employees received well, did well, and released well. The Incident Log events climbed fast, reached a plateau, and fell dramatically in six weeks! Receiving employees knew they could reject and document. Releasing employees knew they had to review their work prior to release or a rejected event would be logged. NOTE: repeat poor releasers were retrained in their procedure role to abate the log entry AND they were retested at the next internal audit for release effectiveness.

Perhaps you've heard the old adage in advertising…to be effective, be in several media as the total will exceed the sum of the parts. Why not follow that in your process improvement plan? Take a look at your Performance Appraisal System. In as many categories as possible, place assessment criteria on how well employees follow the ISO procedures that touch their job. Please include managers too! There should be quality records to support how employees did, or did not, follow their procedures. Sound like a pay-for-performance system? What do you think the effect on achieving targeted profit margin or organizational growth or customer satisfaction would be if 75% of the employees followed along? NOTE: organizational behavior studies indicate the organization turns if only 37% of the population changes their behavior.

Use your internal audit procedure as a tool to test the effectiveness of training and the effectiveness of change communication. A high incident process improvement obstacle is the organization does not place enough emphasis on change communication. When a new procedure is launched, the Management Representative is obligated to test the effectiveness of the training with a special audit. Audit findings reports should show effective communication due to effective compliance from the affected employees. NOTE: poor audit results means retraining the affected parties, not the whole organization.

Tips Section:

Have short, lean procedures that make it easy to train affected parties well. Effective training minimizes audit findings. Pay now or pay later.
Tell every student that training effectiveness will be tested by internal auditors and the Registrar.
Tell every student that an unexpected audit finding will result in retraining and documentation of the retraining. Who wants to have 3-4 retraining records?
Use the Internal Audit as a procedure internalization tool, not a stick!
Allow employees to reject and document suspect or nonconforming work. The pain will be real. It will abate in weeks, not months or quarters, as employees migrate to quality assurance behaviors.
Integrate the Quality Management System into the Performance Appraisal System.

Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com, specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, Skills Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at 1-877-554-7831 or by email. The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to 1500 employees.

Is ISO/TS 16949 better?

Yes. Here's why.

The International Standards Organization believes in continual improvement. They have listened to the voices of the QS-9000 universe who have told them what is broken. QS-9000 has not produced significant improvement in the supply base due to the lack of effective implementation and monitoring. Would you believe organizations hired Registrars who did not take their job seriously? Audits of Registrars discovered some alarming trends:

They did not use control plans as reference documents during audits
They were not aware of customer specific requirements
They did not use the required checklist
Their audit findings did not reference the specific requirement, nor describe the failure to meet the specific requirement, nor a description of specific evidence that was observed
They did not address personnel training, especially OJT records
They did not audit client management
They did not discover client unreported changes to the product, process, or material
They did not view the QMS as a total system

The new Standard is being administered by the International Automotive Oversight Board (IAOB) that has adopted repair measures. The IAOB get well plan includes:

A new, beefed up, Registrar auditor re-training program prior to release for auditing
Publication of the new calibration Rules of Registration to the ISO/TS scheme.
Maintain a central database with audit schedules, results of audits, and auditor qualifications to take corrective action measures should the Registrar not be proactive.
Schedule a site review of the Registrar should supplier performance measures go bad to determine how the Registrar permitted it to happen.

So the first step in continual improvement is to expect Registrars to take their job seriously and to be calibrated in such a manner that their performance measuring and monitoring can be effective.

The next steps address some root causes why QS-9000 was ineffective over time.

Cause #1

QS focused on product, assuming the processes were robust enough to make long runs of product fit for customer use. Well, the processes were not effective and corrective action was not taken.

Nor was there an incentive to plan better, integrate better, to effectively monitor, and to take timely corrective action with a bias for prevention. ISO/TS now requires all suppliers to have a procedure for Manufacturing Process Design using the tools and methods of Product Design and Development. These tools are: specifications, process flow chart/layout, process FMEA, control plan, work instructions, acceptance criteria, data for quality, reliability, maintainability and measurability, and methods of rapid detection and feedback for nonconformities.

Additionally, Registrars are being instructed to test for Customer Orientated Processes (COPs). Internal Auditing is beefed up by requiring formal audits of the Quality Management System, a Manufacturing Process audit for each process to test for effectiveness, a scheduled Product Audit at various stages to verify conformity. Now, the Registrar will test for the effectiveness of these new internal audits.

Additionally, ISO/TS requires the validation of processes for production (7.5.2) which means some internal auditor needs to be assigned to test that the processes have the ability to achieve planned results or write a nonconformance.

Additionally, Section 8.2.1.1 Customer Satisfaction-Supplemental where the organization shall monitor the performance of manufacturing processes to demonstrate compliance with customer requirements for product quality and efficiency of the process.

Still additionally, Section 8.2.3.1, Monitoring and measurement of manufacturing processes establishes criteria for how and when its done.

In summary, the get well plan is to focus on the processes that realize the product.

Cause #2

QS focused on having the audit trail document as proof of conformity. There was little attention paid to the task doers role in supporting quality assurance. Now, the Standard is more humanistic by using ISO-9001:2000s section regarding competence, awareness and training (6.2.2 d), organizations need to show how they ensure its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of quality objectives.

ISO/TS goes even further by requiring a process to motivate employees to achieve quality objectives, to make continual improvements, and to create an environment to promote innovation. There shall be a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware of their role for quality assurance. (NOTE: there are effective employee recognition program concepts available with a bias for low administration and reward costs.)

The get well plan is to involve the people capital better.

Cause #3

Ineffective management of suppliers who may or may not have ISO or QS registration. Ineffective supplier PPAP warrants, unreported changes in product, process, or material that set the stage for problems. Heck, they are using the same set of ineffective Registrars too.

Now ISO-9001:2000 has analysis of data (8.4 d) where data needs to be generated as a result of monitoring and measurement of suppliers. ISO/TS identifies supplier monitoring if there is a delivered product quality issue, if there are customer disruptions including field returns, if there are delivery schedule problems, and if there are customer notifications of quality or delivery issues. The assumption here is suppliers are expected to provide timely problem analysis, possible corrective action, and evidence of their monitoring of their manufacturing processes.

The get well plan is to formally measure and monitor (NOTE: key and under performing) suppliers with the expectation to achieve effective, timely, corrective and preventive action or to exercise Business Management System controls like payment delays or holds, stop sole sourcing agreements, and eventual PO movement to other sources.

Cause #4

QS, with ISO-9000:1994, had a series of Elements for compliance. They were evolved over time and brought better controls for their time. Now, using ISO-9001:2000 as its base, ISO/TS 16949 takes an enterprise view for quality assurance management. The only exclusion permitted is Design and Development for those that do not design.

Now, there is a requirement to set measurable quality objectives at relevant functions and levels within the organization. ISO/TS further requires the definition of measurement and their inclusion into the business plan. A note in ISO/TS seeks objectives to be achievable within a defined time period. Objectives now must be monitored in the Management Review Meetings via trend analysis to determine continual improvement is being achieved. The assumption here is poor trends mean formal corrective actions are launched.

The get well plan is to harmonize the Quality Management System with the Business Management System.

Is ISO/TS 16949 better? Yes, by plan, because it addresses the broken parts of its predecessor to close existing performance gaps in implementation and monitoring.

Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com, specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, Skills Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at 1-877-554-7831 or by email. The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to 1500 employees.

Making Money with ISO: the Seven Controls

What is a better reason to adopt an international quality management methodology? The purpose of adopting ISO is top management's desire to cascade quality management behaviors down the organization to a habit strength level. The goal is to manage employee behavior well without direct daily supervision. The effect is to stop costly problems. The following seven controls are offered to show how the organization can strategically achieve planned profit:

1. Procedures

This is the weakest of all the controls if you consider them as a stand-alone tool. Start with them as the initial step making money. ISO Standards require you to have a preventive action procedure. The method for planning to prevent problems is the documentation of quality assurance procedures based on the cumulative knowledge of what goes wrong in organizations, namely, the ISO Standard itself! Consider why each of the requirements in the Standard is there. They are the corrective action plans to prevent what went wrong in the past! Make money by being consistent. The key purpose of this control is to KNOW EXPECTATIONS.

2. Training

Plan to prevent problems by training employees on their responsibilities and authorities to exercise quality management in their day-to-day activities. Teach them to receive well (or reject and document), to do well, and to release well. Teach them how to react to the unexpected. Make money by preventing the costs of crisis. The key purpose of this control is to PLAN TO PREVENT PROBLEMS.

3. Have auditing

ISO requires internal auditing of the Quality Management System (QMS). Your training class on QMS procedures ends with statements like:

An auditor will test your ability to follow the procedures that touch your job.
Should a problem arise, the get well plan is another documented training class.
All audit findings must be verified later that the retraining corrective action was effective.

Unspoken, here, is the fact that auditing will identify individuals who are not following procedures on a daily basis. Who wants be discovered three, four, or five times? Have the Business Management System take over in those cases of repeated poor behavior. Make money by confirming employees are doing well. The key purpose of this control is employees have to PASS THE BEHAVIOR TEST.

4. Permit rejection

ISO requires in-process monitoring. Can you agree that any enterprise can be described as a series of receiving, doing, and releasing work until a customer is happy and pays? While monitoring the releases from prior activities, there is a chance employees may find suspect or nonconforming or unexpected incoming work. Your training guides them on how to behave to the unexpected and reject it back as unacceptable! Require your employees to use their experience and judgment to not accept or pass along problems. Make them responsible to follow their monitoring procedure and the reaction plan should the unexpected occur. Permit rejection. It is the only way to stop crisis management later. Make money by stopping bad product early in the process before more value is added. The key purpose of this control is the AUTHORIZATION delegated to employees to manage their work, to prevent crisis and unwanted costs, early in the process.

5. Document Incidents

ISO requires documentation of nonconforming incidents. Have an enterprise-wide method to document incidents of the unexpected. Authorize receiving employees to document or advise supervision to document these incidents. Determine during Internal Audit that employees can and have documented the things that go wrong without being fired or disgraced. Gather data, maybe for the first time, to permit analysis and corrective action.

Something magical begins to happen when employees are authorized to document unexpected incidents. Upon finding poorly released work, they have a chance to bring it to the prior activity informally without public documentation. The poor releaser has a chance to take it back, repair the problem, and hurry it back into the work stream. An effective mini personal contract is established due to the delegated AUTHORITY to reject and document. Yes, the procedure is not being followed to the letter. I contend this mini contract is ideal as it allows for an occasional human oops and cements the concept that employees own and practice quality assurance without direct supervision. Of course, repeat offenders are usually disclosed. Make money with first time good work. The key purpose of this control is the IDENTIFICATION OF KNOWN PROBLEMS.

6. Have analysis

In control #5 you established the enterprise-wide incident reporting method or methods. Now is the time to provide effective resources to analyze the collected data for corrective and preventive action. Most of the time, re-training is the expected corrective action. The rest of the time, more effort is required. Organizations use regression analysis to track back in the process to discover the root cause of the current problem. In manufacturing organizations, problems reside in one or more of the following domains: man, machine, material, method, or environment. The root cause, or causes, are in these domains.

ISO requires quality objectives to be established at relevant functions and levels within the organization. Measurements and data come from monitoring. Seek ISO continual improvement. Resources provided to analyze data for root cause and preventive action should achieve the required continual improvement. Would you believe there are companies that do not analyze and repair known problems? Make money by not repeating problems. The key purpose of this control is ROOT CAUSE PREVENTION OF KNOWN PROBLEMS.

7. Have communication

The twist here is effective communication. Some folks have said that ineffective communication is the root cause of all problems. ISO sees communication as a control for planning to prevent problems. Control begins with the training on the procedures that touch your job and the authorization to reject and document unexpected incidents. Internal audits test for employees doing well and communicates they are quality assurance managers OR they need retraining support to get on track. Design and Development organizations have planned design reviews that are communicated to the customer as well as affected parties inside the organization to prevent customer rejection at the end of the process. During the contracting process, organizations are expected to add to customer requirements to better provide a product or service that is fit for use.

Don't forget the communication to sales reps and customer contact employees that they are NOT authorized to promise or accept new or changed business without passing the request through the contracting process. Scope creep and friendly extra work has to stop in favor of investigation for possible billing opportunities. Stop to analyze every communicated customer complaint against the original contract because a complaint may be a billable change request. Make money by billing where you can. The key purpose of this control is to communicate EFFECTIVELY, TO AFFECTED PARTIES.

These seven controls are universally applicable as planning to prevent problems so every enterprise can make their target profit margin. Use them or take your chances.

Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com, specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, Skills Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at 1-877-554-7831 or by email. The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to 1500 employees.

ISO 9000:2000 & ISO/TS 16949 Safety, Motivation and Your Personnel System

With the enactment of the new standards for the automotive industry this past spring, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) has set a deadline of December 31, 2006 for all suppliers to be registered to the new standard. Although it seems to be along way off, a little over four years from now, should you wait until the last minute to move forward? You have the option of which standard to re-register to for the next couple of years, QS 9000 or migrate to the new standard ISO/TS 16949. Regardless of which way you decide to go based on your current resources available, waiting until the middle of 2005 or later will only cost more, as the demand to become registered becomes paramount. Remember the lessons learned with the Y2K debacle. Companies were charging double and even triple the normal hourly rated during the year 1999. If you are not required to move to ISO/TS 16949, remember that ISO 9001:2000 is to be in place and your organization registered by the end of 2003 to the new version.

In the confines of the new standards, several areas can be done in advance. These advance areas can also help to reduce your Workers Comp insurance rates and improve retention of staff. With the following previews into these areas, you can start your strategic planning now and be ahead of the game. This will allow for a saner transition that will be easier on your staff. The areas that will be discussed in this article concern sections from “Part 6: Resource management”.

Safety and Environment

The standards read:

6.4.1 Personnel safety to achieve product quality

Product safety and means to minimize potential risks to employees shall be addressed by the organization, especially in the design and development process and in manufacturing process activities.

6.4.2 Cleanliness of premises

The organization shall maintain its premises in a state of order, cleanliness and repair consistent with the product and manufacturing process needs.

As you will notice, the word “shall4 is used to qualify the safety area. If you are going to address the safety issue and try to minimize it to the extent possible, you will suddenly find yourself not in compliance with the regulations and laws governing workplace safety. OSHA/MIOSHA or your state-sponsored plan requires that every employer provide a workplace that is safe. The regulations are specific and you must establish those programs such as, Hazcom, “Right-To-Know4 Safety Plan, Fire Plan, etc. that apply to your organization. Properly prepared, the documentation for these areas will easily fit into your Quality Management System. The cost reduction in injuries and lost work time expenses should be a major concern to every company. Moreover, a major accident or injury requires you to report it to the OSHA/MIOSHA agencies immediately. This will start an investigation into what happened. You will be seeing OSHA/MIOSHA investigators in your workplace. Violations that they find can result in assessed fines of up to $1000 initially with repeat or willful disregard situations bringing fines per incident up to $10,000. How many of these do you want to see?

When was your current plan last evaluated? Or should we ask do you even have a set of plans that are required under the Safety Regulations? A gap analysis should be completed to find out what needs should be addressed. Our audit system will fit the gap analysis methodology. The time to prepare and plan is now not when the last possible moment arrives. In addition, if you are also looking at ISO 14000 registration, these documents will be ready to fit into this set of standards.

Employee Motivation

The standards read:

6.2.2.4 Employee motivation and empowerment

The organization shall have a process to motivate employees to achieve quality objectives, to make continual improvements, and to create an environment to promote innovation. The process shall include the promotion of quality and technological awareness throughout the whole organization.

The organization shall have a process to measure the extent to which its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objectives (see 6.2.2 d)],

When it comes to motivating employees, many employers automatically think in terms of money. This is the last of the motivation tools to use. If you consider the basis of Maslows Theory, money is fine in the case of an entry-level job in many companies but becomes a demotivator very quickly. When the goals are raised it becomes ever harder to attain the goal and very quickly, that elusive money carrot is not attainable. So what should the elements of a good program look like?

Factors such as how many of the employees are married; age group, etc. should be reviewed to see where the staff is in their life plan. A gift program that has multiple pages of quality items that can be selected where the is no price listed or limit on what can be selected in the catalog, can be an excellent way to go. The employee can take it home and the spouse or family could become involved in the selection process. Trips where there is no business requirements involved for the employee and spouse also create a more satisfied employee. These types of programs can actually cost less then throwing money at the program and achieve better and longer sustained performance. Be a bit creative or find a good outside source that can help you to establish these types of programs.

Human Resources

This is the introduction portion of Section 6 of the standards. The area off Safety and Motivation fall under this staring point in the Section. Beyond the two previously discussed areas, there are other major issues that should be reviewed now. This early review will provide you with a smoother transition to the new standards.

6.2 Human resources

6.2.1 General

ISO 9001:2000, Quality management systems --- Requirements

6.2 Human resources

6.2.1 General

Personnel performing work affecting product quality shall be competent on the basis of appropriate education, training, skills and experience.

As you will see under 6.2.2.2 Training, there is a note that requires careful consideration:

NOTE 1 This applies to all employees having an effect on quality at all levels of the organization.

This is a very broad-based statement and includes departments that previously were not included in the definition of processes. Accounting areas, all of the IT area and others now fall within the confines of the standards.

6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training

ISO 9001:2000, Quality management systems -- Requirements

6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training

The organization shall

a) determine the necessary competence for personnel performing work affecting product quality,

b) provide training or take other actions to satisfy these needs,

c) evaluate the effectiveness of the actions taken,

d) ensure that its personnel are aware of the relevance and importance of their activities and how they contribute to the achievement of the quality objectives, and

e) maintain appropriate records of education, training, skills and experience (see 4.2.4)

Some of 6.2.2 issues were in the old QS 9000 system. You were supposed to teach people what their jobs were and make sure that the quality standards were being followed. So now you not only have to determine the core competencies, teach the staff to be able to operate in these competencies, you also must evaluate the persons performance. This is where the danger areas can start entering your system if you do not take into account the “Laws of the Land”.

In reviewing previous QS 9000 job descriptions, the core activities were listed. Little if any information on education, skill levels needed, experience, working conditions, physical requirements and other issues was on the job description. The information did correspond to the standards of the program but, the aspect of “following the laws of the land4 were left out. In many cases, these job descriptions caused problems with agencies such as the EEOC and the State Fair Employment Practice Agencies. Now with the process also including evaluations being required, there is even more room for discrimination claims if your program is not consistent and appropriate.

As companies setup this section of the standards, there should be great care taken to implement a system that is fair and equitable. Consistency with the laws is vital.

6.2.2.1 Product design skills

The organization shall ensure that personnel with product design responsibility are competent to achieve design requirements and are skilled in applicable tools and techniques.

Applicable tools and techniques shall be identified by the organization.

6.2.2.2 Training

The organizations shall establish and maintain documented procedures for identifying training needs and achieving competence of all personnel performing activities affecting product quality. Personnel performing specific assigned tasks shall be qualified, as required, with particular attention to the satisfaction of customer requirements.

NOTE 1 This applies to all employees having an effect on quality at all levels of the organization.

NOTE 2 An example of the customer specific requirements is the application of digitized mathematically based data

6.2.2.3 Training on the job

The organization shall provide on-the-job training for personnel in any now or modified job affecting product quality, including contract or agency personnel. Personnel whose work can affect quality shall be informed about the consequences to the customer of nonconformity to quality requirements.

The training areas re-enforce the need for effective and measurable performance evaluation. If you were to consider the now infamous Ford Motor management appraisal instituted by the former President of Ford, the management appraisal most likely would qualify under the ISO standards but, was not compliant with the issues of non-discrimination with age as a factor. Lawsuits prevailed and the appraisal format was thrown out. If a company the size of Ford Motor can make this type of mistake, you must be extremely careful that you do not repeat history. Before implementing any changes involving Section 6 of the standards, you should have an independent gap analysis audits completed by an impartial outside source. Analysis of the Safety program, Motivation areas, Training and Development and the entire human resource system should be completed. This can save you time, money and the prospects of poor morale due to improper implementation of a poorly designed program.

Michael A. Holzschu is the managing principal in the firm of Holzschu, Jordan Schiff & Associates specializing in Human Resource Systems, with a special focus on employee handbooks, job descriptions, performance appraisal systems, training, safety and quality issues. He can be contacted at (248) 476-6907 or by email mholzschu@hjsa.com or through the company website www.hjsa.com. . The companys client base is primarily small to medium employers from all types of industries located throughout the United States.

A Better Way To Hire Using a Skills Management Approach

Hiring right is the first step to good retention. Follow 3 steps:

1. Prepare properly

2. Gain objective information about the candidate's ability to do the job

3. Make an objective assessment to assist you in making the hiring decision after the interview

Maintaining objectivity is easier said than done. It starts in the recruiting process. The first step is to design a description of the job that focuses on the results that you need from the position. Those results need to be specific, measurable, action oriented, results based, and time bound. Use LeanISO's Skills Matrix as your tool for core skills identification.

Next, you need to plan your strategy for finding the right candidates. This means designing the "advertisement" for the opening (or posting), and choosing the methods that will deliver the expectations to candidate prospects. Select descriptions and criteria from the core skills on the Skills Matrix.

The third step is to execute that strategy and competently screen the resumes that come in. Use the Skills Matrix Assessment Guides to assign numerical values to resumes. Interview the better matches to have them expand on how they accomplished their resume claims.

When you get to the interview stage, focus on performance first and personality last. Too many managers do the opposite, because it is a natural tendency. Look for energy, drive, and initiative in your questioning. This doesn't mean that you are looking for an "extrovert." This is about the candidate showing that they take the initiative over and above the typical employee. Get examples of the candidate exceeding expectations.

Other things to look for are performance trends over time, comparability of past accomplishments to your position's objectives, experience, education and industry background, problem solving and thinking skills, overall talent, technical competency and potential, management and organizational abilities, team leadership abilities, and then character, personality and cultural fit.

After the interview, rate each area on a scale; using the Skills Matrix Assessment Guidelines. Think objectively about the information you were able to get in the interview. Total the score and compare with other candidates you interview. Hire the candidate with the highest score. Once you hire the candidate, manage them according to the Skills Matrix expected skills you created for the position and used in the interview.

Attachment: a sample Skills Matrix and Assessment Criteria for a Sales Rep

NOTE: please see www.leaniso.com/skills.htm to get an overview of how these documents are used in the Skills Management Process.

Sales Rep Assessment Criteria Guideline

Revised: 3-2001

New product development - forming partnerships with development staff for design improvements by being the "voice of the customer". Providing insights gained from customer contacts regarding their needs, plans, key suppliers, etc.

Current account relationships - improving satisfaction levels, quick responses to customer concerns, building trust to obtain competitor benchmarking data, working the Customer Satisfaction Surveys, hosting site visits to demonstrate capacity/capability and positive effects of being Quality Assurance registered.

Forecasting - demonstrating accuracy in sales forecasting, demonstrating improvements in accuracy, showing "pipeline" skills for future business.

Purchasing system - knowing purchasing procedures and expectations, typical timeframes to support customer requirements for purchasing product for our sales to them, support in making quotations that can be delivered on time.

Quote management system - knowing and using the procedure for Customer Requirements, understanding cycle times for our internal business acceptance process, effective use of the proposal system, providing insights for setting margins.

Organization delivery cycle times - knowing your product's cycle times to avoid setting unreasonable customer expectations, coaching customer design engineer's on prototype process/timing, working positively inside the organization for delivery cycle time improvements, providing insight on customer tolerance regarding order to delivery times.

Phone skills - professional image, effective use of cell phones, checking for messages, modem use at work and in the field. Use of conference calls to expedite decisions and reduce travel expense.

Written expression - professional image in memos, reports, sales presentation material, use of turnaround documents, appropriate initials and date on all correspondence, accuracy of data presented, ability to obtain commitments from written documents.

Corrective action skills - knowing and using procedure for Corrective and Preventive Action, evidence of satisfaction opinion improvement in current accounts, attending/helping customer complaint resolution team meetings, effective communication to internal staff of customer concerns or expectations prior to formal complaints (if possible).

Expense reports - on time, accurate, effective use for sales development.

Project management - establishing "who, will do what, by when" as much as possible to obtain mini contracts with target closing dates, time allocation skills to get projects done on time or ahead of time, satisfactorily closing customer complaints, delivering "pipeline" products as forecasted, obtaining future model year business per strategic planning.

Sales presentations - when done…delivered professionally, appropriate research to answer questions at presentation time, using appropriate media, targeted to specific needs being solved by doing business with us, offers for site visits, when possible, to build confidence for delivery capacity.

Benchmarking competitors - contribute to strategic needs to benchmark competitor's products to have an audit trail where ours are superior and using contacts professionally to obtain benchmarking data/facts.

PC literacy - knowing and using company provided software to achieve written expression skill levels at desired levels.

Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com, specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, Skills Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at 1-877-554-7831 or by email. The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to 1500 employees.

LeanISO, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

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