ISO 9002 registration?The F.P. Horak Co.

Editor's Note: This is the 12th installment in the monthly series on The F.P. Horak Co., a Bay City, MI-based printing firm pursuing ISO 9002 registration.

Two pieces of free advice.

First, always schedule a pre-assessment before attempting an actual ISO audit.

Second, never schedule a pre-assessment immediately after an internal audit.

These words of wisdom come courtesy of Kevin Krzyminski, The F.P. Horak Co.'s quality assurance manager. He speaks from experience. Horak's pre-assessment, a mock audit conducted by a registrar representative, took place a mere two days after management review—the meeting where Horak's Quality Council went over the outcome of the internal audit.

To give the internal auditors adequate time to perform their normal duties, Horak extended the internal audit by a week. Problem was, management review normally takes place right after the internal audit.

Originally, management review was to happen the week before the pre-assessment. Stretching out the internal audit forced the Quality Council to postpone the meeting to the week of the pre-assessment.

ISO decrees that every company must have "an assigned executive with responsibility to the management system," and at Horak, that executive is President and COO Tim Dust. He met with the Quality Council during management review to discuss the findings of the internal audit.

Time to Talk
Major non-conformances, the severe problems discovered during the internal audit, topped the list of topics covered during management review. According to ISO, those participating in management review must come up with solutions for major non-conformances.

In addition to major non-conformances, the council also discussed minors. One minor non-conformance was that employees couldn't summarize Horak's quality policy. The Quality Council suggested displaying small posters, explaining the policy, prominently.

Dust had a few ideas of his own. "Tim is going to reissue the quality policy to the management team and explain that they are responsible to disseminate it to the rest of the workforce," Krzyminski says.