| 1. Reading a Quality manual |
| A friend of mine sent to me a Quality manual of a small construction company that has about some twenty employees.Reading the manual, I soon noticed procedures of periodical document reviews done by the management representative twice a year together with internal audits. |
| The other day I saw such procedures in another Quality manual. I have felt periodical document reviews will be popular in Japanese quality manuals in spite of no clear requirements of ISO9001: 2000. |
| The one of the causes of this misunderstanding is said to be false explanations done by a Japanese delegate to TC176. Another cause came from revision processes. In CD1 there was requirements of periodical document reviews and in CD2 the word of "periodical" disappeared! |
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| 2. Periodical document reviews are not practically designed in the manual |
| Let's check the way of periodical document reviews by using 5Ws and 2Hs questions. |
| (1) What: What kinds of documents must be reviewed? Do they include drawings? |
| (2) Why: What is the purpose and anticipated effectiveness of periodical document reviews by twice a year? |
| (3) Who: Does the management representative have competence to review all kinds of documents twice a year? |
| (4) When: Is the interval of twice a year adequate for all kinds of documents? |
| (5) Where: Some documents have to be reviewed at job sites for comparing with actual job status. |
| (6) How to: How to review documents? By performing alternative calculations? Or by observing workers' jobs? |
| (7) How much: How many documents he should review and how much time will it take? |
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| If the manual wants to satisfy requirements of " documented procedures", it has to answer clearly for the above questions. But it lacks the above contents. |
| The phenomenon will spread rapidly with non-practical sentences in Quality manuals. |
| ISO9001: 2000 in Japan will have such meaningless problem. |