Change in any form can be challenging, some people find big changes are scary, for some people it's really stressful. Part of the reason apparently is how our brains have developed over the many thousands of years we have been around, in fact your brain is designed to respond to change by triggering your fear response, the fight or flight response ...

You have just noticed that people all around you are making changes to things, they keep tweaking and tweaking them to get "improvement" but they are moving away from what's written down on the paperwork, yes if you standardised the bolts to one size it would be quicker but that's not the point you have rules! We understand, the last thing you want...

Up till now Section 8 of ISO9001:2015 has been really dealing with the planning of the provision of your products and services, in clause 8.5 however that changes to the actual delivery of your products and services and there is a bit to think about here, thankfully you have been working through all the previous clauses in which case this part is e...

Free Template - 5s Red Tag and Red Tag Register Template   This template is set up to let you print out your own Red Tags as you need them (i.e. Just in Time) for use in your 5s program. We have also bundled a register to keep track of all those Red tags and some reporting tools so you know how your program is operating.. all FREE Li...

It sounds counter intuitive doesn't it, if you want to improve your quality and your productivity it's best if you just stand still for a while. Surely you need to be running around doing things, having meetings, inspecting things, checking things, gathering lots and lots of data, maybe even a white board session with your best Ishikawa Diagram (fi...

How many times have you had issues with your suppliers or contractors and the root cause of that issue turned out to be that they just didn't have the right information or clear information from your organisation? It happens more often than people care to admit yet there is no need for this to happen if you actually take a bit of time and think abo...

I was talking to someone the other day about gardening in their organisation, I must admit it got a bit of a "are you mad" look which was fair. However, when you think about it there are similarities. After all as a leader, your role is to grow your people so let's think about it for a moment or two.  Room To Grow  Plants need room to gro...

How often have you left a meeting feeling sure that everyone was on the same page, you were all clear about what was agreed, who was responsible for what and when it was to be done only for all to fall apart 20 minutes after the meeting? Sadly, it's not unusual, and it's one of the biggest areas of frustration within many organisations, leading to ...

 ISO9001:2015 Clause 8.4.2 is all about expanding on what type of controls and the extent that you need to manage these controls on your suppliers to ensure that they meet the necessary requirements to deliver you good products or services in line with your requirements and that their processes don't adversely impact your products or services....

ISO9001:2015 takes a fairly decent step forward in how it handles or rather requires you to handle your Supplier Management within your Quality Management System. It used to be that you just needed a list of your suppliers and to be honest not too much else, it's changed a bit from that. Clause 8.4 is all about the new requirements on organisations...