Supporting the IATF 16949 Quality Management System
- Providing necessary monetary and physical assets, resources and systems (such as personnel, plant/office, logistics, working conditions, etc.)
- Providing and maintaining monitoring and measuring resources (i.e. calibrated equipment)
- Determining and maintaining organizational knowledge
- Ensuring personnel competency and providing additional training to achieve competency
- Communicating the quality policy, relevant quality objectives, and each employees contribution to the QMS
- Documenting information necessary for the operation of QMS processes and conformance to IATF 16949 requirements.
Section 7 Support
This section takes a broad view of items needed to realize the requirements, specifically calling for support in these critical areas:
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- What resources on hand vs. what needs to be procured including:
- labor/skills
- plant or office facilities/utilities
- information technology/communications
- transportation/logistics
- equipment
- working conditions/environment (including physical and interpersonnel emotional, intellectual, and motivational issues)
- Measuring the type, level, scope, continuity and suitability of resources including ongoing justification of their need.
- Calibrating or verifying monitoring and measuring resources that affect the conformity of products and services.
- Determining and maintaining organizational knowledge such as backing up electronic documents, records, or systems and documenting essential tribal knowledge.
- What resources on hand vs. what needs to be procured including:
There are several supplementary requirements specific to IATF 16949. For section 7.1 the additional requirements are as follows:
- 7.1.3.1 Plant, facility and equipment planning
- 7.1.4.1 Environment for the operation of processes
- 7.1.5.1.1 Measurement systems analysis
- 7.1.5.2.1 Calibration/Verification records
- 7.1.5.3.1 Internal Laboratory
- 7.1.5.3.2 External Laboratory
The aptitude of those who execute QMS processes need to be assessed against the requirements for the tasks, and any deficiencies be addressed through personnel training, exposure, outsourcing or reassignment.
There are several additional requirements for IATF 16949 Section 7.2
- 7.2.1 Competence- Supplemental
- 7.2.2 Competence- on the job training
- 7.2.3 Internal auditor competency
- 7.2.4 Second party auditor competency
The standard requires that everyone, not just those who administer the QMS, become familiar with its policies and objectives and know what they must do to achieve its goals, including what happens if they don’t adequately meet these requirements.
There are several additional subclauses for IATF 16949 Section 7.2
- 7.3.1 Awareness- supplemental
- 7.3.2 Employee motivation and empowerment
A formal plan and activities for informing the organization about the QMS needs to include:
- Who needs to know about each specific QMS element
- How and when that communication will take place
- And who is responsible for the information being transmitted
Section 7.5: Documented Information
Section 7.5, documentation has been expanded to encompass the needs of what is required by the standard, but also to consider what is needed by the organization itself in order to implement the QMS.
The majority of the criteria can be met using document control software. The simplest and more efficient method used for document control is maintaining on a shared network with restricted editing functionality and updates managed manually.
There are several additional subclauses for IATF 16949 Section 7.5:
- 7.5.1.1 Quality Management System Documentation
- 7.5.3.2.1 Record Retention
- 7.5.3.2.2 Engineering Specifications
Please note that certain text from the ISO 9001 standard is only used for instructional purposes. Standard Stores recognizes and respects the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) copyright and intellectual property guidelines.
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