We’ve all seen “Cinderella processes,” those processes that, although they do all the work in the company, are underevaluated, almost ignored by auditors.

I recently conducted a survey on 20 auditors. It was intended to analyze what processes are emphasized in ISO/TS 16949 audits, as well as any nonconformances. The results were quite frustrating, considering that the ISO 9001-based quality management schemes were born during the late 1980s, some 25 years ago.

I included 20 auditors to have a reasonably representative sample, since I was reprimanded by one Quality Digest reader that one event is not significant enough. I wonder what he would think of one accident badly hurting his body; I personally consider even one event to be significant when it’s a system failure.

Let’s start with the Cinderella processes, then we’ll go through the nonconformances Hit Parade.

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