ISO-9001-Lead-Auditor Exam Results

You, as auditor, are in dialogue with the quality lead and managing director of a small business that supplies specialist laboratory equipment and furniture.

You: "I'd like to look at how you manage change in the organisation. What changes have you made as a

business, say, over the last 12 months?"

Auditee: "We have made some strategic changes, the main one being that we no longer manufacture our

own products in house."

You: "That sounds like quite a significant change. What has been the impact of that?"

Auditee: "We now mainly sell other manufacturers' products, under their brand names, and have outsourced

manufacture of our own brand products to one of our suppliers. Unfortunately, we had to make six members

of our staff redundant. This represents about 20% of our workforce, so this has been quite a challenging

time."

You: "I'm sure. What were the reasons for making the change?"

Auditee: "Our manufacturing section was a small operation, and we struggled to cope with fluctuations in

demand. During busy periods, we found it hard to meet lead times, and in quiet periods we had staff with

little to do. This was having an impact on customer satisfaction and meant we had to charge premium prices

that made our product uncompetitive."

You: "How did you go about the change?"

The auditor asks to speak to the purchasing manager about the selection of the subcontractor to

manufacture the company's own brand products.

You: "How did you choose a supplier to manufacture your products?"

Auditee: "We have had a long-term relationship with a supplier ABC Ltd - we gave them our design

drawings, got them to complete a supplier questionnaire and run a couple of trial batches for us. We were

happy with the result and we have used them ever since."

ISO 9001:2015, clause 8.4.1 outlines situations when controls need to be applied to externally provided processes, products and services. Which one of the following situations is applicable to this scenario?

You are carrying out an audit at a single-site organisation seeking certification to ISO 9001 for the first time. The organisation manufactures

cosmetics for major retailers.

You are interviewing the Manufacturing Manager (MM).

You: "I would like to begin by looking at the cleaning controls."

MM: "We record the cleaning of the equipment at the end of every batch. This document details the minimum cleaning frequency and the

procedures to follow for all areas and each item of equipment. The person who carries out the cleaning puts their initial on the document and records

the time and date alongside."

Narrative: You sample production records over 3-days and note down evidence of nonconformity as per the table below.

Scenario 7: POLKA is a car manufacturing company based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company has around 14,000 employees working in different sectors which help with the design, painting, assembling, and test drives of the final product. The company is widely known for its qualitative products and affordable prices. In order to retain their reputation, POLKA implemented a quality management system (QMS) based on ISO 9001.

Before applying for certification, the company decided to conduct an internal audit to check whether there are any nonconformities in their QMS and if the requirements of ISO 9001 are being fulfilled. The top management appointed Sean, the internal auditor, as the team leader of the internal audit team. Sean required from the top management to have unrestricted access to the employees and executives of POLKA and to the documented information. Furthermore, Sean required to establish a team with a large number of auditors, considering the size and the complexity of the organization. The top management of POLKA agreed with Sean's requirements.

The top management, in cooperation with Sean, assigned 10 more employees to the audit team. Following that. Sean planned the audit activities and assigned the roles and responsibilities to each auditor. They began by interviewing employees of different manufacturing departments to check whether they are aware of the process of the QMS implementation. While conducting these activities, one of the auditors asked Sean for permission to audit the department in which he worked on a daily basis, as he was very familiar with the processes of the department.

Along the way, the teams findings showed that the staff were trained, documented information was updated, and the QMS fulfilled the requirements of ISO 9001. The internal audit took three weeks to complete, and on the last week the audit team held a final meeting

The team shared their results and together drafted the audit report This report was submitted to the top management of the company. The report was maintained as documented information, and was available to the relevant interested parties.

Based on the scenario above, answer the following question:

Based on Scenario 7, the team worked together to draft the final audit report. Is this acceptable?

You are carrying out an audit at an organisation seeking certification to ISO 9001 for the first time. The organisation offers health and safety training to customers. Training courses are offered either as open courses, delivered at a public venue, or online, or as courses that are tailored to meet specific requirements. The business operates from a single office and those who deliver the training are either full-time employees or subcontractors.

You are interviewing the Training Manager (TM).

You: "What quality objectives apply to the training process?"

TM: "One of the quality objectives we aim for is a 90% minimum exam pass rate for all open training courses."

You: "How do you measure this objective?"

The Training Manager shows you a record on her computer and you see the following:

Which two of the following statements are true?