You are going to run into complaints in your customer satisfaction. Everybody does. Problems come in all shapes and sizes, and the only thing you can be absolutely certain about is that you will have some. The main trick in dealing with obstacles is to adopt the right attitude. Difficulties are an integral part of your organization practice. They aren’t something to be avoided. They are something to be used. They provide invaluable opportunities for learning.
The reason we are all stuck in life’s mud is that we ceaselessly run from our problems and after our desires. Meditation provides us with a laboratory situation in which we can examine this syndrome and devise strategies for dealing with it. The various snags and hassles that arise during meditation are grist for the mill. They are the material on which we work. There is no pleasure without some degree of pain. There is no pain without some amount of pleasure. Life is composed of joys and miseries. They go hand-in-hand. Meditation is no exception. You will experience good times and bad times, ecstasies and frightening times.
So don’t be surprised when you hit some experience that feels like a brick wall. Don’t think you are special.
It is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence. Our job as great leaders is to learn to be patient with ourselves, to see ourselves in an unbiased way, complete with all our sorrows and inadequacies. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves. In the long run, avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself. Paradoxically, kindness entails confronting unpleasantness when it arises. One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is autosuggestion: when something nasty pops up, you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant.
9.1 Monitoring, Measurement, Analysis and Evaluation ISO Navigator Pro™ is a free tool that provides practical, expert guidance for businesses wishing to interpret and better implement the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018.
Our range of templates cover the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018, and offer an easy way to implement your next management system. 9.1.2 Customer Satisfaction This requirement is comparable to the requirements from ISO 9001:2008 Clause 8.2.1 – Customer Satisfaction, the change being that your organization must now solicit customer’s perception about your organization, and its products and services.
You should seek and record evidence that your organization has implemented a consistent and systematic approach to dealing with customer feedback and is obtaining information on customer perception.
Just collecting data on customer perceptions is not sufficient, you should seek and record evidence that your organization has analyzed and evaluated customer data and that conclusions have been made with regard to the effectiveness of the management system.
Is the situation stable, improving, or deteriorating? Are customer needs and expectations changing? Both internal and external auditors will look for proof that a consistent and systematic approach has been implemented to deal with customer complaints. This approach would typically include defined responsibilities for logging and tracking complaints, clearing technical issues, determining problem causes and actions to address them. Specific examples of complaints must be sampled.
The link between the customer complaint process and corrective action also requires special scrutiny. Determine appropriate methods for monitoring and measuring customer satisfaction by:
Using customer satisfaction surveys; Providing methods for receiving and dealing with customer feedback; Providing suitable processes to monitoring trends in, and reviewing customer data.
9.1.1 Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation - general You should note the additional requirement for your organization to evidence the evaluation of the results of monitoring and measurement, not just their analysis and confirm that your organization has considered what, how and when to measure and that the outcomes from decisions result are ensuring appropriate process control.
Also note a new requirement to monitor the performance and effectiveness of your organization’s quality management system. You should expect to see that your organization has developed a process (method, techniques, format, etc.) to identify, collect and analyze various data and information from both internal and external sources, including:
Monitoring and measuring results; Process performance results; Meeting objectives; Internal audit findings; Customer surveys and feedback; 2nd or 3rd party audit results; Competitor and benchmarking information; Product test results; Supplier performance information. This ‘input’ (information and data) should reflect upon the adequacy, suitability and effectiveness of the quality management system and its processes. The ‘output’ (result of the analysis) must provide information (understanding, insight, awareness, confidence, knowledge of, etc.). The analysis output must provide insight to:
Customer satisfaction and perception; Product conformance; Process performance; Product and process characteristics; Trends in products and processes; Opportunities for preventive action; Suppliers and subcontractors. Other potential or useful options might include:
Need for corrective action; Opportunity for improvement; Competition. It is important to document and retain as evidence the results of the evaluation of the performance of the quality management system. The quality objectives and the related KPIs established under Clause 6.2 provides useful input into addressing this clause.
Monitoring and measuring QMS operations and activities will establish a mechanism to ensure that your organization is meeting its policies, objectives and targets. In order to meet this requirement, your organization must perform six steps:
Identify the activities that can have a significant impacts and risks; Determine key characteristics of the activity to be monitored; Select the best way to measure the key characteristics; Record data on performance, controls and conformance with objectives and targets; Determine the frequency with which to measure the key characteristics; Establish management review and reporting. Establish the monitoring and tracking criteria for each activity that has a significant impact or risk and review the action plan. You should incorporate any monitoring and measurement information to cover these same activities.
9.1.3 Analysis and Evaluation This requirement is comparable to ISO 9001:2008 Clause 8.4 - Analysis of Data. You should expect to see that the organization has developed a process (method, techniques, format, etc.) to identify, collect and analyze and evaluate data and information from both internal and external sources (i.e. quality, environmental and health & safety records, monitoring and measuring results, process performance results, objectives, internal audit findings, customer surveys and feedback, 2nd or 3rd-party audit results, competitor and benchmarking information, product test results, complaints, supplier performance information, etc.). This ‘input’ (information and data) should reflect upon the adequacy, suitability and effectiveness of the quality management system and its processes. The ‘output’ (result of the analysis) must provide information (understanding, insight, awareness, confidence, knowledge of, etc.). The analysis output must provide insight to:
Customer satisfaction and perception; Product conformance; Process performance; Product and process characteristics; Trends in products and processes; Opportunities for preventive action; Suppliers and subcontractors. Need for corrective action; Opportunity for improvement; Competition. The requirements of Clause 9.1.3 interrelate with those in clauses:
Improvement; Corrective action; Risks and opportunities. Furthermore, any record with data that is an established part of the management system may be considered relevant for analysis. Records are evidence of system performance and should be analyzed for potential improvements.
10.0 Improvement ISO Navigator Pro™ is a free tool that provides practical, expert guidance for businesses wishing to interpret and better implement the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018.
Our range of templates cover the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018, and offer an easy way to implement your next management system. 10.2 Nonconformity and Corrective Action There is a clear link between ISO 9001:2015 Clause 8.7 Nonconforming Outputs and Clause 10.2 Nonconformity and Corrective Action. ISO 9001 Clause 10.2 requires your organization to evaluate the need for actions that will prevent recurrence of nonconformities. A nonconformity might arise via customer compliants, poor or adverse results and trends from monitoring, reviews, assessments or inspections, non-fulfilment of legal or regulatory requirements, or procedures not being followed.
Where as, the intent of ISO 9001 Clause 8.7 is to prevent the unintended delivery or use of nonconforming outputs (outputs should be considered as products and/or services) and that any nonconformity is controlled and corrected to prevent its unintended use by or delivery to the customer. Clause 8.7 only requires an organization to deal with outputs (products and/or services) that fail to conform to specified requirements.
As the first step in the nonconformity and corrective action process, the root-cause of the nonconformity should be determined and the effectiveness of the subsequent corrective action should be monitored and evaluated. Corrective actions can be triggered through nonconforming tests or other work, customer complaints, internal or external audits, management reviews, and observations by staff.
Correction (also referred to as immediate correction) is action taken to eliminate a detected nonconformity or defect (adapted from ISO 9000). A correction can be made in conjunction with undertaking corrective action. For a product nonconformity, correction might include reworking the part, accepting the nonconformance through the concession process, replacing the product, or scrapping the product.
Definition of corrective action Action implemented to address the root-cause(s) and contributing cause(s) of the undesirable condition, situation, nonconformity, or failure; action taken to prevent recurrence. As part of the corrective action process you must identify all the causes (root-cause and contributing causes) that have or may have generated an undesirable condition, situation, nonconformity, or failure.
The decision to apply or not apply the corrective action process should be made by the appropriate level of management within the company, based on the level of risk. This guidance provides a 6-step methodology for applying corrective action and meeting the requirements in each of these clauses. Many factors that can trigger the corrective action process, examples include:
A safety impact that affects the product or personal; Product performance and/or reliability issues; High impact on production and/or maintenance operations; Repetitive problems to one part of the activity/process, or similar problems across many activities/processes; Difficulty in detecting the nonconformity; By customer request; Significant quality or management system issues; Complex problem that cannot be solved without assistance of others not located where the problem occurred. These clauses state the requirements for the occurrence of a nonconformity and include actions to prevent a similar nonconformity or problems occurring. The analysis of nonconformities should not look for someone to blame, or a department that is ‘more responsible than another’, but rather for understanding and improving the organizational weaknesses that made them possible.
Where your internal audits identify that your organization’s policy, objectives, standards and other requirements as outlined within their management system are either not implemented, or are improperly implemented, a nonconformance report should be raised and entered into the nonconformity log as appropriate. This should require an agreed response from the relevant Line Manager prior to closure.
The root-cause must address the nonconformity and the corrective action must address the root-cause. Any nonconformities and subsequent actions to prevent their reoccurrence and the effectiveness of the corrective action(s), should be duly documented and retained.
10.3 Continual Improvement This requirement is comparable to ISO 9001:2008 Clause 8.5.1 Continual Improvement. One of the driving goals of ISO 9001 is the principle of continual improvement. You must be able to demonstrate continual improvement.
Most auditors would expect you to revise the quality system documentation and processes as the quality management system matures or when a new process is implemented.
Determine whether your organization identifies improvement opportunities and management system underperformance using the data output from its processes, such as data analysis and evaluation, internal auditing, management review, and the use of appropriate tools and methodologies to support validate findings.
Ensure that your organization has implemented the identified opportunities for improvement in a controlled manner.
You should seek objective that your organization has implemented a process, with appropriate methods, techniques, and formats for identifying areas of underperformance or opportunities for improvement.
You should expect to evidence that your organization has selected the appropriate tools and techniques to investigate the causes and thereby establishing and implementing a process for continual improvement. The impetus for continual improvement must come from the use of (as a minimum):
You will be required to ensure that you continually improve the degree to which your products and services meet customer requirements and to measure effectiveness of your processes.
To this end the continual improvement principle implies that you should adopt the attitude that improvement is always possible and your organizations should develop the skills and tools necessary to drive improvement.
The PDCA cycle is a perfect way of introducing continual improvement to your organization’s activities. Each step to improvement can be defined by four sub steps, Plan, Do, Check and Act:
Plan: Establish a timetable for internal audits and management reviews. Establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with your customer’s requirements and your organization’s policies. Do: Implement changes designed to solve the problems on a small scale first to see the effect. This minimizes disruption to routine activity while testing whether the changes will work or not. Check: Monitor and measure processes and product against policies, objectives and requirements and report the results. Also check on key activities to ensure that the quality of the output is conforming and not influenced by the changes. Act: Take actions to continually improve process performance. Implement the changes on a larger scale, if the experimental changes have proven to be successful. This means making the changes a routine part of the activity. Also act to involve other people, departments or suppliers affected by the changes and whose co-operation is needed to implement them on a larger scale. Make sure that changes are documented properly according to the documentation requirements.
Our new range of audit checklists include the tools needed for corrective action management in accordance with ISO 9001.
[Refer to step-methodology for nonconformity guidelines in our next pages]
[Sources: iso9000family, iso14000, iso45000, sa8000, ]