Quality audit as a driver for compliance to ISO 9001:2008 standards

Abstract

Purpose -Quality certification to international standards is an obligatory requirement for automotive and truck industry suppliers of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The unique aspect of companies that had their foundation in research and development (R&D) and evolve to operations is that they require a different approach to implement and certify their quality management system. This paper aims to investigate this issue. Design/methodology/approach -The strategy was to plan an effective implementation of a quality system through the continual application of internal audits and supplier readiness reviews. The evaluation processes for departments and stakeholders had been in place since the first "Gap" audit when assessing the level of compliance against the international standard and the customer requirements. Findings -Seven aspects were part of the readiness reviews (Engineering, Operations, Supply Chain, Quality Assurance, Material Control, Supplier Control, and APQP). Each aspect was assessed independently up to its complete implementation. The level of engagement of the implementation team and the commitment of the top management were increased with each audit result. Practical implications -Creation and improvement of policies, procedures and forms were part of the strategy to ensure that the internal audit process remains objective de rigueur to assess the effective implementation of the system. Check-lists and recurrent internal audits were performed on the brand-new operations activities of the company. Originality/value -The introduction of the known maturity level of processes is a method of factorizing and setting priorities for the implementation.

A literature review on the integration of total productive maintenance elements with ISO 9001 standard

“…All these world class strategies originated during the last four decades and have conquered today's organisational arena (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008a,b;Devadasan et al, 2003;Fotopoulos and Psomas, 2009;Gotzamani et al, 2007;Hansonn et al, 2003;Hernandez, 2010;Inman et al, 2011;Magd and Curry, 2003;Sharma and Kodali, 2008;Vinodhkumar and Bhasi, 2011). The benefits achieved through the implementation of these world class strategies have been widely reported in literature arena (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008c;Fotopoulos et al, 2010a;Hernandez, 2010;Koc, 2007;. After nourishing such benefits, during the last two decades, many researchers worked to integrate those world class strategies with each other (Thomas et al, 2008(Thomas et al, , 2009.…”

“…A major revision was made to these standards in the year 2000 when the 20 clauses of ISO 9001:1994 were completely replaced by five major clauses (Bhuiyan and Alam, 2005;Psomas and Fotopoulos, 2009;Tzelepis et al, 2006;Zeng et al, 2005Zeng et al, , 2007 ). This standard is denoted as ISO 9001:2008 (Hernandez, 2010;Psomas et al, 2010).…”

“…In pursuit of attaining this goal, organisations have been acquiring competitive strengths through the adoption of world class strategies such as total quality management (TQM), total productive maintenance (TPM), lean manufacturing, agile manufacturing, Six Sigma and International Standard Organisation (ISO) 9001 certification (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008a;Bamber et al, 1999;Bayo-Moriones et al, 2011;Breja et al, 2011;Gurumurthy and Kodali, 2011;Inman et al, 2011;Leonard, 2010;Sadikoglu and Zehir, 2010;Thomas et al, 2008;Vinodh et al, 2008). All these world class strategies originated during the last four decades and have conquered today's organisational arena (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008a,b;Devadasan et al, 2003;Fotopoulos and Psomas, 2009;Gotzamani et al, 2007;Hansonn et al, 2003;Hernandez, 2010;Inman et al, 2011;Magd and Curry, 2003;Sharma and Kodali, 2008;Vinodhkumar and Bhasi, 2011). The benefits achieved through the implementation of these world class strategies have been widely reported in literature arena (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008c;Fotopoulos et al, 2010a;Hernandez, 2010;Koc, 2007;.…”

“…Most of these new standards have been developed by appending ISO 9000 series standards. For example, TS 16949 standard has been developed by integrating the ISO 9001 standard with the features required to implement quality system requirements of automobile industry (Hernandez, 2010;Miguel and Dias, 2009;Qui and Tannock, 2010). Likewise AS 9000 standard has been developed by integrating ISO 9001 standard with the quality system requirements of aerospace and aviation industry (Mangelsdorf, 1999;Miguel and Dias, 2009).…”

Social compliance audits and multinational corporation supply chain: evidence from a study of the rituals of social audits

“…As such, supply chains have begun to attract the attention of researchers. From disciplines as diverse as medicine, engineering, public policy, human resources, operations and production management, environmental management and international standards come a whole range of explorations that vary from the procedural and technical (see, for example, Hernandez, 2010) to the increasingly puzzled and frustrated (see, for example, Pedersen and Andersen, 2006;Egels-Zandén, 2007) as the diversity of practices, standards, objectives, conflicts and imponderables within supply chains begin to reveal themselves. For example, Locke and Roomis' (2007) attempts to explain the very different practices in two Mexican Nike suppliers both of which had been audited as "satisfactory", or Silva-Castenada's (2012) exploration of when evidence of failures of standards is inadmissible in palm oil certification, both suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the monitoring, surveillance and auditing processes that sit at the heart of the supply chain.…”