My name is John and I am a facilities manager with a young cutting edge micro-electronic company. I have had several years experience of working within an ISO 9001 organisation and therefore felt sure that it would be a simple step up to actually setting up our system.
We had some advice from QMI Scotland as to where to start and help putting an action plan together, and they also suggested that I attend an Internal Auditor training course. I was quite keen as it is a course that is recognised throughout the industry and internationally (through IRCA) as being "the" internal auditor course.
Jack Dunn was the tutor and it was immediately apparent that he knew his stuff. He put everyone at ease and made the course lively and fun, but it was still hard work. I realised from him that there was more to the standard than I had originally thought. I realised that I would need more time than I had allocated to setting up the system, but I also knew by the end of the course that I had the tools to do it. The difference from hoping I was doing the right things to being confident that the tasks I was undertaking would bring the right results.
Our company is really keen to expand and so we need to get the system embedded in with the current staff so that they continue to do the right things as we train the newcomers and we need to have the correct documentation to allow the newcomers to learn quickly. In a small company there isn't the luxury of long bedding in periods nor of having people learn from mistakes. We need our people to do the right things and deliver on time to the customer.
Since the training I have restructured our documentation and have made sure that obsolete documents are archived. I have to amend some more of the documentation, carry out some in-house sessions on the changes to the current staff and then start auditing. I am looking forward to the auditing because the course has taught me so much, and I know that I will learn more about the effectiveness of the company as a result.
Also see our News section for further news items.
