Why you need to determine the processes needed for the ISO Management System (MS)

Clause 4.4 of the ISO standard requires you to determine the processes needed for the management system and their application throughout the organisation, including:

• inputs needed and the outputs expected from these processes
• sequence and interaction of these processes
• monitoring required to ensure the effective operation and control of these processes
• resources are necessary for these processes and ensure their availability
• responsibilities and authorities for these processes

Clause 8.1 requires you to implement and control the processes determined in 4.4 to meet the requirements for providing your products and services.

ISO promotes adopting a process approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness of a management system. This process approach enables you to enhance customer satisfaction by:

• understanding and consistency in meeting customer requirements
• the consideration of processes in terms of added value
• the achievement of effective process performance
• improvement of techniques based on the evaluation of data and information.

Title

The Process (Title) column includes a list of the most common types of processes an auditor would expect to see in your MS, including:

1. Strategic Direction including 0perational planning and Control
2. Sales including Customer Acquisition
3. Procurement including Reviewing requirements for products and services
4. Delivery including Control of production and service provision
5. Job Completion including Release of products and services
6. Change Management including Control of changes

The outputs of each process are generally input to the following procedure. You can easily tailor these to match your organisation or add new methods:

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Auditable Steps

This column documents the high-level process as a procedure that the auditor can quickly follow. Each step should include the next checkpoint in the process, which can be evidenced through completed documents, photos, systems or checklists.

For example, Job completion could include:

1. ​​​Check job against Project Plan
2. Check all Specified Paperwork using Job Completion Checklist
3. Review Changed Requirements Log
4. Confirm Customer Satisfied. If no, report in Corrective Actions Log
5. Completion and final sign-off of Job Tracking Spreadsheet
6. Return all Specified Paperwork to the office​
7. Check and query any discrepancies against PO and then ​invoice
8. Follow up call for Customer Feedback and testimonial​

An alternative way to document your processes is to use flowcharts. Understanding processes as auditable steps will help you to identify risks and opportunities for improvement.

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By understanding processes, your MS will help you plan its processes and their interactions and consistently meet your quality and regulatory requirements. In addition, the process approach allows you to;

• identify risks and prevent quality issues from happening
• ensure that its processes are adequately resourced and managed
• and that opportunities for improvement are determined and acted on
  

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Clauses

This column defines the ISO (9001) clause, which is linked with the processes.

For example, an operational procedure (flow chart) communicates the standard's clause 8 (Operations).

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Controls

From the How-To guide 3 (Controls), this column allows you to link the controls in place for this process to minimise non-conformance

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Interested Parties

Again, from your How-To guide 5 (Interested Parties), allocate the parties involved in this process from the list you constructed earlier.

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Management Reports

The Process list data can be filtered and sorted to provide management reports by clauses, interested parties.

Having determined roles, responsibilities, and authorities for your ISO MS, you can now move to the next step:

Step Implementation Guides:

1: Roles & Responsibilities

2: Aims and objectives

3: Controls

4: SWOT Analysis

5: Interested Parties

6: Legal Register

7: Processes & Procedures

8: Key Performance Indicators

9: Risks & Opportunities

10: Audit Programme