Good morning, everyone.

Adding value by auditing using the process- and metric-driven approach requires new methods and an increased focus on supplier performance metrics (i.e., scorecards).

I was recently asked to write about the ISO 9001:2000 requirements that are still giving folks a hard time. Recent audits that I’ve conducted have led me to conclude that there are several clauses that continue to give us heartburn.

I’ve long been frustrated, both as an auditor and as a consultant, by the unique exemption most organizations extend to distributors.

How did your quality system get so complex and redundant?

Perhaps the single most pervasive reason top management resists the implementation of a quality management system relates to our failure, as quality professionals, to demonstrate the return on investment.

ISO 10006:2003, guidelines for quality management projects, was released in the fall of 2003. This standard is creating the next wave in our understanding of project managing processes.

There’s a marauding infestation of adverbs and adjectives that infiltrate the text of quality documents and operating procedures, wreaking havoc wherever they are found.

We all love exceptions. They afford us unfettered permission to break the rules. They are the vehicles we use to get around “things”—whatever those things happen to be.

Lean means doing the most with what you have. It’s efficiency and intelligence. In the modern economy, lean is a fact of life.