Employee training has always been a vital component of a company’s quality culture and actually solidifies it but in certain scenarios EQMS is the best choice to effectively manage the trainings in an organization. With the added benefits of interoperability with standard documents (such as SOPs/WIs/Guidelines, etc.), CAPA, Risk Assessment etc. an EQMS way of managing trainings is becoming a trend nowadays.

The following 7 signs are in no particular order. You have to read them and decide which ones are prevalent in your organization or how many of these can you relate to?
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In ISO 9001:2015, the clause 7.2 specifically requires an organization to determine the necessary competency of employees and ensure they are qualified on the basis of appropriate education, training, or experience.

Therefore, many organizations maintain a competency matrix with nomenclatures as Qualification Matrix or Skills Matrix to determine the required competency for employees working in different functional areas to identify any skill gaps,  bridge those gaps through a well-defined competency development program such as training programs and assessments to verify employee comprehension.

Often times it is debated within organizations whether the competency matrix should be prepared and maintained by the HR Department. or the responsible Operational Managers. Though, we’ll not touch on this controversial topic here, keep in mind that the post below is specifically meant for Operational Managers to help them develop an understanding to identify the skill gaps, growth opportunities for their employees and ensure job activities are effectively completed.

A Competency Matrix is typically a table that displays people’s proficiency in specified skills and knowledge.

All businesses have the requirement for qualified employees. The more competent the people, the better potential business results. However, under certain critical environments such as technical tasks or safety compliances, it is important to understand what employees comprehend about their specific jobs tasks.

Have a look at figure 1 and take the following steps to prepare a Skills Matrix for your team:

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In today’s era managing logistics has become a basic requirement in the success of any organization’s operations.

An effective logistics management strategy ensures control over inbound freight, optimal inventory levels, organizes the reverse flow of products, and utilizes freight moves through appropriate transportation modes – all these significantly cut costs which directly impact the bottom line.

With the growing complexity of logistics management, many companies select a Third-Party Logistics (3PL) service provider to manage or partially manage all their logistics functions. 3PLs are equipped with expertise and advanced technology to cut costs and improve processes more efficiently than most companies can do on their own.
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This blog refers to ISO 9001:2015 Clause 7.2 “Competence” and is specifically relevant to organizations seeking to implement or update to the latest ISO 9001:2015 version -.

At the heart of creating Excellence in People is building a high-performance culture. That’s why various global excellence models such as EFQM and Malcolm Baldrige Excellence frameworks and even global quality awards such as Deming Prize have given due focus on “People”. ISO 9001:2015 is no different and recognises the importance of people by emphasising their “competence”.

In today’s economy, many organizations are experiencing high employee turnover which increases the operational challenges for organizations in terms of effectiveness and efficiencies..
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This blog aims to help organizations understand the meaning and interpret the requirements stated in ISO 9001:2015 concerning “outsourced process” and how to carry out a meaningful gap analysis against your current processes and procedures.
The Clause 8.4 in revised standard specifically talks about control of externally provided processes, products and services.
There is a noticeable change in terminology of the revised ISO 9001:2015 standard that “Purchasing” and “Outsourcing” are now referred as “externally provided processes, products and services”.
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Have you ever felt anxious about something that was about to happen at your workplace.? Imagine if the “something” was called an audit, increasing your anxiety to a stratospheric level regardless of the preparations you have made for it.

Well, Product Audit, Process Audit, System Audit, Safety Audit, 5S Audit, Internal Audit, External Audit, certification audit, re-certification audit, surveillance audit, environmental audit, energy audit… the list goes on and when it’s an ISO certified site it gets worse.   People working ISO Certified facilities get familiar with all different audit types mentioned above and in some way all of the different types of audits types can be addressed by using an effective QMS system.
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This blog refers to ISO 9001:2015 Clause 7.1.6 “Organizational knowledge” and is specifically in relevance to organizations seeking to implement or update to the latest version of ISO 9001:2015 along with anyone thinking about implementing the international standard.

“You know more than you can tell”

Albert Einstein’s research assistant Michael Polanyi outlined a fine distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge through the above sentence. And so has the ISO organization through this revised version of ISO 9001:2015.
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The ISO standards are reviewed every five years and accordingly revised if needed.

This is mainly to keep pace with changing business environment and to provide effective tools to tackle new industry challenges. It also clearly reflects in Mission & Vision statement of ISO Subcommittee for Quality Systems (ISO/TC 176/SC 2)
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