| Last week Company D received the final assessment by Body B. This is the fourth assessment of my clients done by Body B. Thus I have had information about seven assessors of the body that did the four companies in series. The common features of their assessments were typical confusion with assessments and recommendations. |
| For example, an assessor for Company D pointed out each corrective and preventive action report had to have a column for confirmation that corrective and preventive actions are effective. This was a recommendation. Moreover this is not a good system as will be mentioned later in this article. |
| ISO9001: 1994 requires corrective and preventive actions taken shall be under controls to ensure that "they are effective". In Japan there have been some quarrels about the English meaning of "they are effective" and some say that it has two meanings. |
| The one is to ensure that corrective and preventive actions are carried out (ISO9001: 2000 is improved, and it requires this in 8.5.2 d) and 8.5.3 c)).. The other is to ensure the related non-conformities have not been occurred since the corrective and preventive actions taken (ISO9001: 2000 is improved, and it requires this in 8.5.2 f) and 8.5.3 e)).. |
| For the former requirements Company D uses a corrective and preventive action report. |
| But as the company very few quality problems and has a repetitive production system, it avoids to add one column for the latter requirement to the report because just one look of the reports every month when the management representative writes monthly report to his president, is enough to respond for the latter requirement. |
| As for this column, a reader of this website once mailed to me complaining his company's (say Company F) complicated disposal of corrective and preventive actions reports and are facing breakdown of the " effectiveness" of the system. The main cause of complication is that |
| his company has the two columns of confirmation of implementing actions and non-occurrences of the same problems on the same report. It is not an efficient system. I advised him, as an alternative, to separate the both columns and set up "efficient" system. |
| Ironically, in order to have continuous " effectiveness " of a system we must consider "efficiency" of its system which ISO9001: 2000 gives way to ISO9004: 2000! |
| Taking in all, the assessor of Body B violated audit rules and did not a good advise to control of corrective and preventive actions of Company D, which may cause collapse of its system in future as mentioned in Company F's problem. |