Beyond ISO – leveraging processes
In my final year engineering degree project, I fronted my dissertation with a quote from a guy called Lord Kelvin. He used to run about Scotland a couple of hundred years ago measuring the temperature of the water at the top and bottom of waterfalls and as a result came up with the Kelvin scale […]
Practical ISO implementation
As some of you know I used make diamond tools for a living. This involved mixing not very sparkly diamonds in even less sparkly clay. We would then make the mixture very hot and squeeze it very hard to make an “insert”. And of course, we didn’t want our finger burnt so, we let the […]
PDSA: A Magnificent Tool for Learning, Improvement and Innovation
In order to stay ahead in today’s ever-changing world organisations need to constantly strive to improve processes, products, and services. A great tool for assisting us is the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model and this blog explores how PDSA can be a magnificent tool for learning, improvement, and innovation. But first, is it PDSA or PDCA? PDSA […]
The Black Box Approach: Failure a springboard to success
Some years ago, we picked up a new client, they had an existing management system, and we were asked to undertake an audit prior to their external assessment because they hadn’t had time to do so, and they needed a quick fix. Our consultant undertook, to my mind, a spectacular audit gently challenging the status […]
The chain reaction
My management hero is a fella called Dr W. Edwards Deming and he developed his “chain reaction” model to explain how improving the way in which an organisation works, and how improving their products and services are delivered, can have a very positive impact on efficiency, effectiveness and productivity, which ultimately filters through to the […]
Analysing processes
Some processes work well, others don’t. Process mapping helps you identify what’s working well and what’s not. You can then prioritise to drive real and quantifiable improvement. So, what is a process? All work is undertaken in a process. They start with some kind of trigger or an “input” for doing something, “stuff” then gets […]
Who is interested in the party?
In this blog we are going to explore clause 4.2 of the ISO 9001 standard which has some crossover with the previous requirement for context (clause 4.1). External interested parties may be, but equally may not be, highlighted as part of the context analysis. So, what are and who are interested parties? At this stage […]
Looking at the external world
Having originally undertaken a 4 year apprenticeship in the Merchant Navy, I didn’t finish my degree until I was 24 and the first firm I joined, as a freshly minted graduate, was a diamond tool manufacturing company called Van Moppes-IDP based in Gloucester. The MD there was a lovely guy called Ian Marsh. As the […]
Begin with the end in mind
We come across many organisations wanting to implement an ISO system and, in general, there appear to be three core reasons for doing so; Because you are being told to by a client Because you need to get onto tender lists Because you want to improve the way things are done Obviously, if you’re […]