Effective Process Auditing Using the Quality Management Principles of Iso 9004:2000

The ISO 9000:2000 family of standards emphasizes continual improvement. As an integral part of the ISO 9004 standard, eight quality management principles are introduced to guide organizational improvement. This paper explains how to use these principles, the customer-supplier model, and the requirement for a well-managed process, to create a comprehensive auditing checklist. In addition to process auditing, the checkist can serve as a diagnostic tool for root cause identification, problem analysis, and process improvement. Using the checklist, makes auditing an effective value adding activity that leads to improved customer satisfaction, product quality, and organizational effectiveness. INTRODUCTION The ISO 9000:2000 family for standards, issued in December 2000, represents a major improvement to the 1994 edition. It is composed of ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 which are used for certification and continual improvement respectively. Integrated in the ISO 9004 are eight quality management principles (QMPs) to guide the improvement effort. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the principles can be used to guide process auditing. The paper briefly describes the roles of ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 and lists the quality management principles. Next the customer-supplier (C/S) model is described as a framework for process management. Then, by using the QMPs and the customer-supplier model, we create an audit checklist based on the requirements of a well managed process. This checklist can serve as a diagnostic and improvement tool for the product realization processes of any business. Finally, the benefits of using this auditing checklist are highlighted. THE ISO 9000:2000 FAMILY OF STANDARDS AND THE QMPs The ISO 9000:2000 family of standards [4] [5] consists of two basic standards, that are used to certification and improvement of an organization’s quality management system (QMS), as follows: • ISO 9001:2000; Quality management system–Requirements for certification. • ISO 9004:2000; Quality management system–Guidelines for performance improvements. For certification an organization should create a QMS that complies with ISO 9001. Then the organization, guided by ISO 9004 and its QMPs can pursue the goal of continual improvement of its QMS. The standard requires that an organization creates a process-based quality management system that satisfy the standard five major clauses as shown in Figure 1 below.