Statius Management Services Limited

ISO 9000:2000

Paper Three

Suggestions for new procedures

Introduction

As the new ISO 9000 standard draws near to publication companies are likely to become increasingly interested in how the proposed changes are likely to affect them. In order to assist companies determine the likely impact Statius has developed a series of three papers.

The objective of this paper is to:

• Suggest ideas for new procedures that adopt a process approach

The other two papers support this paper and others wishing to know more about the proposed changes, they are:

• Significant changes
• Practical suggestions for implementation
• Layout

This paper develops the new standards "process approach", as advocated in the new standard and makes suggestions on how the new requirements might be incorporated in procedures that describe business processes. Five categories of business processes are suggested

• Strategic processes and procedures
• "Business as usual" processes and procedures
• Support processes and procedures
• Improvement processes and procedures
• Compliance processes and procedures

It ought also to be noted that this paper only addresses processes and procedures that with the advent of the new standard have been newly introduced or radically changes. It makes no attempt to develop process ideas around any business as usual activities or any of the normal support procedures.

Suggested index

The process approach encourages a company to document their processes according to the way in which it does business. Most organisations will have an idea of their strategic and market objectives and will then build processes around delivering those objectives. The processes are the day to day activities of responding to enquiries, winning orders, delivering the service or products required, invoicing for them chasing debt etc. Thereafter most companies focus effort on attempting to improve the way they do business, finally there are various activities that the company need to undertake in order to continue to comply with the law. These are usually essential activities but secondary to the aims of the organisation. These activities have therefore been placed at the rear of the system.

• Strategic processes and procedures
• Business planning and objective setting
• Marketing and market research
• "Business as usual" processes and procedures

Examples of business as usual activities, and therefore the title of the relevant procedures, include:

The key point is that ideally the procedures should follow the logical flow of the business processes, describing these processes in detail not the clauses of the ISO 9000 standard.

Support processes and procedures

• Facilities and infrastructure procedure
• Communications procedure
• People development procedures
• Improvement processes and procedures
• Process & procedure improvement (auditing and self assessment)

Measurement analysis and improvement

• Compliance processes and procedures
• Legal compliance requirements

Please Note: The titles used for the procedures which describe the processes are only examples.

Strategic Processes

Business planning and objective setting procedure To include:

• Objective and targets
• Current markets - current position with regard to customers and potential customers knowledge, key characteristics
• Current competition
• Future opportunities & threats
• Additionally, the business planning process may also include, sharing the plan with the staff.

Marketing and market research procedure To include:

• Details of market research and the process of obtaining market research
• Details of current market segmentation
• Market trends
• Profiles of typical customers
• Market share and plans for increasing share

Some companies may also like to include details of customer satisfaction in this procedure. In most smaller organisations it may be more appropriate to merge these two procedures, in larger organisations marketing activities are usually separate.

Support Processes

Facilities & infrastructure procedure To include:

• Workspace & associated facilities
• Equipment hardware & software (asset register might be created for each with any software passwords and possibly key codes. This would then be protected accordingly)
• Calibration
• Possibly stores & identification and traceability, client dependent
• Possibly materials handling, client dependent

Alternatively, this might be partially addressed by expanding the QPM with:

• Plant listing
• Fleet listing
• Description of the offices and premises (size, locations etc)

Communications procedure To include:

• All staff emails & memo’s
• Notice boards
• Staff meetings & team briefings (formal or informal) at various frequencies
• Staff conferences
• Improvement groups
• Web sites & intranets
• Magazines & newsletters
• Corporate video’s

People development procedure To include:

• Facilitation of objective setting and decision making (also see business planning)
• Encouraging recognition and reward
• Ensuring effective teamwork
• Competence requirements for each process activity
• Selection, ongoing training and career planning - linked to business planning
• Establishing team and individual objectives
• Using measurement of people satisfaction
• Investigating why people are leaving

Training plans should be developed and include:

• Training objectives
• Programmes and methodologies
• Training resources required
• Evaluation of training provided
• Measurement of the effectiveness of training

Note: In some companies it may be useful to merge the communications and people procedures.

Improvement processes

Process and procedure improvement To include:

• Auditing
• Cost of quality
• Self assessment, as detailed by the annex in ISO 9004

Measurement, analysis and improvement To include:

• Measurement and monitoring requirements, if not addressed as part of the process procedures
• The analysis of data
• The improvement activities that result from the analysis
• Any improvement groups
• Any other activity geared at improving performance

Compliance processes

Legal compliance procedure To include reviews of:

• UK law
• EU law
• International law
• Sector initiatives and guidelines
• Council bylaws
• British standards
• International standards
• Codes of practice

These reviews should consider:

• How the organisation ensures that it is made aware of new legislation regulations and standards.
• Whether the organisation is affected by any of the above
  If so, how
• What needs to be done in order to comply?

The development of projects and programmes to ensure compliance

Appendix 1 - Process Measures - (currently under further development)

An integrated management approach

Please note:

This list has been developed to provide people with examples of process measures. It is NOT advisable to pluck "favourite" measures from the list. The list is not exhaustive and a companies processes need to be examined in detail before suitable measures might be decided on.

Other notes

Most SME’s will probably only have a handful of critical measures
Some measures may cascade down from the strategic to the operational level
Some measures may appear in more than one section or process types, other probably could appear more often than they do

Strategic processes and procedures

"Business as usual" processes and procedures

Support processes and procedures

Improvement processes and procedures

Compliance processes and procedures

Appendix 2 - Common Legislation, this list is not exhaustive

General

Consumer protection act 1987
Consumer Protection act 1987
Data protection act 1998
Disability discrimination act 1995
Employment act 1989
Employment of children act 1973
Employment protection act 1990
Employment rights act 1996
Factories act 1961
Fair trading act 1973
Offices, shops railways and premises act 1963
Sex discrimination acts 1975 & 1986
Trade descriptions Act 1968

Environment