The date that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming into effect is approaching soon. This new law affects almost all companies, but it can have a bigger effect on certified companies. Regardless of the…
Nick Appel19/02/2018
The new ISO 45001 has replaced the OHSAS 18001. Just like most other ISO standards, the ISO 45001 adopted the High Level Structure (HLS). This is a great step forward because it now allows for consistent…
Nick Appel12/02/2018
That may sound like a contradiction in terms, particularly if you’ve ever read a management system standard document! They’re not the simplest of things to comprehend but that doesn’t mean your management system has to be…
Nick Appel07/02/2018
Top management buy-in is crucial when it comes to a successful management system. Management should actively show that they can see the added value of the system. Almost every director states that quality is at the…
Nick Appel15/01/2018
Toolbox Meetings are key when communicating safety related topics with employees. However, a number of companies still feel it is a necessary evil, mainly due to all the administration involved. In this post there are just…
Nick Appel18/12/2017
Top Management Audits There are two common types of Quality Management System audits. Theres the companys 1st party audit where the organisation audits itself. This type of audit is more commonly known as an Internal Audit.…
Nick Appel12/12/2017
As with every aspect of training employees, importance of training employees on the management system and common ways of working is critical to maintain consistency. A management system will never be effective or functional if nobody…
Nick Appel19/10/2017
How to Identify Environmental Aspects Creating an environmental overview is a key part of your environmental management system. Basically the environmental aspects are the activities of your organization that have an impact on the environment. In…
Nick Appel27/09/2017
After the elaborate piece on the Cause and Effect diagram we will take a deeper look in the 5 Whys as a root cause methodology. The concept behind 5 why’s is that you keep on asking…
Nick Appel28/08/2017
Total Cost of Quality is a very important topic but not well known by a lot of C-level managers. When asked about the total Cost of Quality, a lot of C-level managers simply don’t know or…
Nick Appel31/07/2017
A proper root cause analysis can be the difference between making money and losing money. The analysis is designed to get into the detailed fundamental causes of the issue, without any bias. The cause and effect…
Nick Appel18/07/2017
Risk analysis has become a vital exercise for a lot of international standards. A large majority of certified companies are required to have a risk assessment methodology and should be aware of the risks within their company…
Nick Appel12/07/2017
Objectives are pretty vital to the Management System. With objectives you can measure how the company is doing against a benchmark set by the company itself. Of course the company can do much better or worse.…
Nick Appel20/06/2017
With the new ISO9001:2015 the stakeholder analysis has got a much more prominent position in the Quality management system. Of course, every company knows their most important stakeholders. However, not every stakeholder is always well understood…
Nick Appel11/06/2017
Why would any company comply with a standard apart from being forced by customers? One important reason is that quality is at the core of every organization. When an organization doesn’t deliver a high quality service…
Nick Appel31/05/2017
Every company uses MS Office. It could be start to use this for the quality management. When we speak with the companies who used this before using a quality management platform, they mentioned a couple of…
Nick Appel18/05/2017
Customer satisfaction is one thing every company strives for. However, figuring out whether a customer is really satisfied isn’t always that easy. There are a lot of different variables that can influence the customer satisfaction research…
Nick Appel09/05/2017
Yes I know, ideally your company should be ready for an external audit every day of the year. However, most of the time, you will need at least a couple of weeks to gather all the…
Nick Appel24/04/2017
The effectiveness of the corrective action can end for a lot of companies into a NCR during the audit. These companies are having trouble to not only to describe the effectiveness properly, but mainly to measure…
Nick Appel22/03/2017
The SWOT analysis is a business tool that is widely used. The introduction of chapter 4 “Context of the organisation” within the new ISO standards makes this technique applicable for management systems. Since then, it has been commonly…
Nick Appel03/03/2017