What does the application of the process approach in a QMS enable?
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 have just completed the opening meeting. You are interviewing the Managing Director (MD).
You: “Good morning. I would like to gain an understanding of your business and its strategic direction.”
MD: “Of course. We are facing challenging times. The market is extremely competitive, and customers typically look for the least expensive option when arranging health and safety training. Our annual sales revenue has struggled to grow over the past two years. Most of our employed trainers are planning to retire over the next 12 months, and we are looking for more subcontract trainers. Achieving ISO 9001 certification will, I hope, give us the capability to improve our operational performance. Also, many of our competitors do not have any form of management system certification, so I hope it will give us that competitive edge needed to secure orders. We intend to promote our ISO 9001 certification on our website and across all other customer-facing media.”
Which three of the following audit trails would you take to explore the extent to which external and internal issues have been determined and used to enable the business to achieve the intended result(s) of its quality management system?
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. "
This scenario presents a number of audit trails to different ISO 9001 requirements.
Which three of the following requirements would be relevant audit trails for this scenario?
Scenario 5: Mechanical-Electro (ME) Audit Stages
Mechanical-Electro, better known as ME, is an American company that provides mechanical and electrical services in China. Their services range from air-conditioning systems, ventilation systems, plumbing, to installation of electrical equipment in automobile plants, electronic manufacturing facilities, and food processing plants.
Due to the fierce competition from local Chinese companies and failing to meet customer requirements, ME ' s revenue dropped significantly. In addition, customers ' trust and confidence in the company decreased, and the reputation of the company was damaged.
In light of these developments, the top management of ME decided to implement a quality management system (QMS) based on ISO 9001. After having an effective QMS in place for over a year, they applied for a certification audit.
A team of four auditors was appointed for the audit, including Li Na as the audit team leader. Initially, the audit team conducted a general review of ME ' s documents, including the quality policy, operational procedures, inventory lists, QMS scope, process documentation, training records, and previous audit reports.
Li Na stated that this would allow the team to maintain a systematic and structured approach to gathering documents for all audit stages. While reviewing the documented information, the team observed some minor issues but did not identify any major nonconformities. Therefore, Li Na claimed that it was not necessary to prepare a report or conduct a meeting with ME ' s representatives at that stage of the audit. She stated that all areas of concern would be discussed in the next phase of the audit.
Following the on-site activities and the opening meeting with ME ' s top management, the audit team structured an audit test plan to verify whether ME’s QMS conformed to Clause 8.2.1 (Customer Communication) of ISO 9001.
To do so, they gathered information through group interviews and sampling. Li Na conducted interviews with departmental managers in the first group and then with top management. In addition, she chose a sampling method that sufficiently represented customer complaints from both areas of ME ' s operations.
The team members were responsible for the sampling procedure. They selected a sample size of 4 out of 45 customer complaints received weekly for electrical services and 2 out of 10 complaints for mechanical services.
Afterward, the audit team evaluated the evidence against the audit criteria and generated the audit findings.
According to general principles of sampling procedure, did the audit team select a valid sample for electrical services?
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