ISO 9001 By Mary McDonald marymcd@mcdcg.com


How Do You Eat an Elephant?


he old saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Benjamin Franklin, in his famous speech in July 1776, stated that “a man, even if replete from dinner, can eat a plate of grapes one at a time until the plate is empty.” Why do we bring up these phras- es? Because it’s an apt description of how you implement a quality management sys- tem.


T One bite at a time.


Some people think that implementing a quality system is too hard, too lengthy, too expensive – too everything. But if you approach it one bite at a time, you’ll find that over time you’ll have it implement- ed. In looking at Ben’s speech, we can see that no matter how full we may be with


Lowest Certification Level • Assembly guidelines • Parts grading • Job descriptions • Training records • Regulatory compliance • Parts appearance • Training • Inventory & QC • Purchasing • Workforce efficiency


our other duties, if we just bite off a small bit of quality system work, we can meet all the requirements over time. When designing an Automotive Recycling stan- dard based on ISO 9001, we had that same concept in mind – break it down to bite-sized pieces.


By taking the ISO requirements, and breaking them into attainable goals, we end up with about 25 requirements. If we took those requirements, and aggregated them into groups, we’d end up with something that looked like the chart shown above, potentially.


18 Automotive Recycling | January-February 2015


Looking only at the lowest level, you could select one item from the list and start working on it. Let’s look at job descriptions. You can start by department to break it down even further – this month I’m going to start writing job descriptions for sales (or shipping, or dis-


Median Certification Level • Reduce returns and cost of returns


• Vehicle purchasing • Parts purchasing & brokering • Shipping and transportations logistics


• Procedures in place for some departments


• Counterfeit and safety recalls • Data collection and analysis


mantling, or…) and next month I’m going to do another area … until even- tually, you have all your jobs documented. Then, plan to tackle training records, to document the training you’ve done and match it to the job descriptions you’ve got written. Once the job descriptions are in place, it should be easier to keep records of training for those jobs. You can approach it from a parts stand- point instead of a personnel standpoint – let’s start with parts grading. By properly and accurately grading parts, you mini- mize returns and customer satisfaction.


once the grading is accurate. So while there are three requirements here, by tightening up on one, you are affecting multiple requirements simultaneously. So then, how do you tackle an ISO stan- dard? One bite at a time ... ■


Mary McDonald is the CEO/CTO of The Mc- Donald Consulting Group since 1995, working to help clients improve processes to positively affect the bottom line. She is a Certified Qual-


ity Auditor and a RABQSA Certified Lead Auditor in several standards, as well as an author and speaker on systems integration and strategic business planning.


Once grading is standardized, the part can be properly labeled and put away. This impacts both inventory and QC, and parts appearance. Parts appearance can be addressed more easily (what the part should look like when it’s ready to be pulled from inventory and sold/shipped)


Highest Certification Level • Better use of technology • Root cause analysis • Corrective action and continuing improvement


• Customer focus • Feedback loop • Management reviews


Looking only at the lowest level, you could select one item from the list and start working on it. Let’s look at job descriptions. You can start by department to break it down even further.


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