Nice article Paul on Quality Manuals. May I suggest that most still do not have the organizations processes mapped or named in the manual and continue writing their Contents page with the headings of the ISO001:2008 Standard. As you say these types of Quality Manuals and others too like ISO14001, ISO18001, AS9100-C and ISO TS16949 must reflect the business processes, their interfaces and interactions to meet as your article's focus, the customer needs but also the way the business and its other interested parties / stakeholders needs are to be met. Organizations cannot harvest the value from their improvement Lean, BPR, Kaizen, TQM, Six Sigma Programs unless the Quality Manual is written around and named in the Content page as its processes. Where are the processes to be stabilised, controlled, improved, made capable and then sustained to be found - in the Quality Manual and its reference to its processes. Hopefully, if well designed compared to the 100+ page tome you referred to with the 'dig deeper hole consultant', organizations can then see value to them and its customers. The Certification Body (may I say so as its not 'accreditation boy' Paul) are starting to change out their Clausal Thinking auditors to now get more Process-approach thinkers and hence auditors who can better understand that clients' business, its processes and as you say how it both meets the ISO9001 requirements and that of their customers. We have seen refreshing new breed of Quality Manuals which are only a few pages and described, in pictures, process maps and interface matrices the Core (Value Stream for Lean folk), Management and Support business processes. Some are using the APQC Process Classification Framework as a guide. The revisions to ISO9001:2008 for the CD of ISO9001:2015 reflects more of this process-thinking which in some ways is what ISO9000.1:1994 described for Processes having the Approach, Deployment, Improvements and Results for all stakeholders. Hang around long enough, and it all returns to the basics I guess. Michael

In my experience, workers seldom perform their jobs by referring to process documentation in any format. Instead, they are trained and coached by their supervisors (managers) until they essentially memorize their jobs.

A question might be, do the managers, who are in some way the process owners, thoroughly understand their processes to the point that they can successfully transfer knowledge of the process to the workers? A "litmus test" could be "if you thoroughly understand this process, then let's see you document it".

My point is, to answer the question posed by the article, "who is the customer of your document?", the answer is "you are".