Verification is an important sibling to audit. Whereas an audit endeavours to see evidence of conformity, verification is about substantiating a claim or a truth. Verification can often be seen as part of the output of a process; a classic example is batch verification to ensure conformity. Verification can be a useful tool to reduce […]

And the winner of the most overused and annoying word of 2020 goes to...... unprecedented!  These are indeed unprecedented times, but a little piece of my soul dies every time I read that phrase - particularly early in the pandemic, when every company I had ever bought anything from sent me an email telling me […]

Top Management is a term prevalent in Compliance circles, particularly in international standards. It refers to the Business Leaders, Senior Executives, SMTs, Directors, The Board, – each company may use different terminology but it refers to those who steer the company vision and direction, make policy, strategy and commercial decisions and take responsibility and accountability […]

The term Sustainability has been common business parlance for a long time now and has become a powerful, unifying concept for how business and society can exist and grow in harmony with the complex environmental systems that we reply on. The term Sustainability has also suffered from over-use and often ambiguous or tenuous application (see […]

Well it had to be really didn’t it? It is in the company name after all! To me, there is an important difference between risk management and risk assessment. Risk assessment is the daily process of identifying hazards, the associated risks and the required control measures - for example: Hazard – working in a chimney- […]

Where do I start?! This topic is so broad and can mean so many different things, from that shoddy quality broken package that arrived from Amazon to the best quality Christmas Pudding for our Socially distanced Christmas dinner. We have all experienced varying levels of quality in the goods and services we buy, but this […]

Processes exist in every element in life. Whether its your morning routine, or sales order process or manufacturing and assembling products. Documenting processes can be an excellent tool, however there are some really important rules that are worth applying: Develop a process mapping control, this ensures your process mapping approach is consistent Processes must be […]

Setting Objectives is an important Top Management activity and one that sometimes isn't given the attention it deserves! Good objectives are based on an understanding of the context of the organisation (i.e. what is going on outside and inside the business) as well as on the risks needing to be controlled and the opportunities to […]

(Or Non-conformity – let’s not get into that debate now!) A non-conformance describes a failure to meet a requirement, it might be a business requirement, a customer requirement or a regulatory requirement. Whilst NCs are never a good thing, trend analysis of NCs can be a vital indicator to a Management Team of the extent […]