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How to Deal with Quality Objectives Not Met?

Discussion in 'ISO 9001:2015 - Quality Management Systems' started by Evan Balcaen, Jan 12, 2016.

  1. Jennifer Kirley

    Jennifer Kirley Moderator Staff Member

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    This is a good framework for reviewing top management's ability to, and eventual establishment of objectives and targets, and the means to achieve them. I agree this is important as we have too often seen the devastating effects of objectives assigned based on forces that should not be directly driving the QMS - I am thinking of financial markets like Wall Street and its global equivalent, which arguably rewrites top management prerogatives, right or wrong. The revised standards attempt to correct that with a focus on customer (stakeholder) interests and enhanced accountability for top management, but it will continue to be difficult to make that stick I think. Auditors can try, but weasel words like "relevant" and "as appropriate" will present an ongoing challenge for us in the back seat to represent the customer and influence leadership behavior as the Technical Committee has apparently desired.

    ...wishing for a "2 cents" emoticon...
     
  2. MarkMeer

    MarkMeer Well-Known Member

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    I think such a hard-lined interpretation would detract from the utility of the quality system. Here's why:
    • Certified companies have a strong incentive to maintain certification (be it regulatory, customer-demand...), and hence want to avoid non-conformity citations.
    • If we say that not meeting a quality objective is a non-conformity, then companies would be incentivised to simply make objectives that are easy to achieve
    • If objectives are easy to achieve, then they are no longer a driving force towards improvement.

    To make best use of quality objectives, businesses should be incentivised to set "challenging" goals, to drive improvement. This means that, in a lot of cases, objectives won't be met. The real questions (as already expressed in this thread) is what does the company do now? Do they identify why? Does failure to meet an objective motivate an examination of the system? If so, it is these actions that need to be commended, rather than a situation where auditors actively penalizing companies for failure to meet stated objectives (by citing non-conformances).
     
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  3. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    Totally agree, Mark.
     
  4. Golfman25

    Golfman25 Well-Known Member

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    ^^^^^^^ This.
     
  5. QA Bee

    QA Bee Member

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    We are just cited with nonconformity by our ISO auditor for having different "Quality Objectives" than in previous years.

    Mainly because there is no real evidence in our Management review of any related improvement per the requirements of the standard on how limits were set for 2016.
    Although, we have set our objectives based on the 2015 data analysis.
     
  6. Andy Nichols

    Andy Nichols Moderator Staff Member

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    Seriously?
     
  7. QA Bee

    QA Bee Member

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    :( Yes, and I totally don't agree but oh well

    This is exactly how its written up:

    Quality objective requirements for 2015 are not included in the annual management review and are documented separately.
    There are also objectives defined for 2016, but there is no evidence of any related improvement or change review per the requirements of the standard, how the limits were set.
     
  8. Jennifer Kirley

    Jennifer Kirley Moderator Staff Member

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    I do agree with the monitoring of performance against objectives, but, as an analogy I do not expect someone to move their goal posts upon learning they can't kick that far. I do expect to see some recognition that they did not meet their goal, why, and what they are going to do about it:

    - If the goal and/or its time frame was simply recognized as unrealistic, then yes revise the goal.
    - If the goal was not achieved for some other reason(s), then carry it over/make plans in the organization to achieve/dispense with it. There may be times when we abandon a goal, temporarily or permanently.

    Just please don't change a number on a document simply because you see me coming.
     
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  9. drgnrider

    drgnrider Member

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    We had an on-time shipment objective we were unable to meet because one month "Corporate" said "Do not ship anything" while we switch to this new global software. We didn't write a NC because we knew why and there was no corrective action we could take to remedy the problem. Once we were allowed to ship again we had even bigger problems from the software, again out of our hands to fix. Management tracked the problem weekly in staff meetings and it was mentioned at the Management Review.

    Basically: Goal was set. It is monitored. When we didn't meet the goal, we reviewed why and took whatever action we were capable of (aka appropriate action). Goal is still the same, we gave up on waiting for corporate to fix it and are now tracking it on our own... now if it drops below goal again, we will assess and go from there.
     
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