Quality Consultant
Section 5.3 of ISO9001: 2015 requires that an organisation seeking to implement the Standard should establish clear roles and responsibilities, in relation to the quality system and its scope.
The author would advocate examination of the high-level interactions of key processes diagram as mentioned previously and to assess which process areas belongs to which department. Then assign clear reporting lines.
In a very small enterprise, there are unlikely to be a variety of departments and one process owner might be responsible for a whole series of activities.
Staff assigned to these roles, need to understand the importance of the quality policy, the management system, and their role in achieving outputs that meet customer needs.
In certain sectors such as the regulated arena roles and responsibilities take on a more fundamental aspect. The manager must sign up to be responsible for their processes.
Areas where there are very specific operations or indeed transactions, might require detailed instructions with dual responsibility assigned.
Managers should report on the areas that they are responsible for. In addition, most organisations will set metrics for the monitor and measurement of key processes. Again, the manager assigned to this process, should be responsible for its daily performance.
There is no defined way to communicate roles and responsibilities. This might be done via job descriptions, duty statements, responsibility tables, work instructions, memos etc. The organisation should create a system that is most aligned to its culture – but avoiding ambiguity with too little data.
For further information and to book your ISO9001 survey please contact: Marcus J Allen at Thamer James Ltd. Email: [email protected]
Marcus has twenty years’ experience in delivering Governance, Risk and Compliance solutions to over two hundred organisations within the UK. Including over one hundred ISO9001 programmes.
Marcus holds a BSI ISO9001 lead auditor qualification and is registered on the BSI Associate Consultant Programme.
Marcus holds the respected Diploma in Governance, Risk and Compliance from the International Compliance Association and holds a master’s degree in Management Learning & Change from the University of Bristol. Marcus is a Fellow of the Institute of Consultants and Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.