Over 32 years of experience of third party auditing, designing, developing & implementing of systems for ISO 9001, 14001, 45001 as well as the product certification such as PPE, WaterMark and Glass products to Australian & International standards

Here’s a contradiction in ISO 9001: 2015 that specifies “retain documented information” only 14 times (including Appendix) but “Shall” as defined “a requirement” 136 times but at the same time, doesn’t require your risks and opportunities be retained or maintained as documented information! It’d be interesting to see if all top management have same understanding of risks and opportunities without any documentation as an example! Same applies to a number of other Clauses. It’d be worthless and kind of hoodoo knowledge if it’s not documented. Being on the both sides of the fence, so to speak, as a consultant as well as an auditor, I find it difficult to understand – how is it possible to audit effectively (internal or external) if there are no documented procedures / instructions / records etc.? What is the point of having systems in place when they can’t be used for training and educating current and potential employees to instil sound foundation for bringing in efficiency and effectiveness? Only alternative is to interview a number of personnel face-to-face, that was always difficult even prior to COVID on-site audits and now it is virtually impossible when audits are performed online. Documented systems are for true believers who like grey areas to avoid taking accountability seriously, resulting in frustrations for the team. Survival and growth of any organisation is the productivity improvement and one definition of productivity is that it “measure show well we do with what we have. Productivity is the most important tool we have for improving our economic wellbeing” and we want to produce more and better goods and services using less effort and resources. Effective systems provide this and your returns on investment on your systems are worth every cent if implemented smartly! Systems are not replacing any other improvement methodologies such as lean or 6 Sigma, in fact, it is complementary and can seamlessly be integrated into the systems to achieve benefits of both worlds so to speak.