You work for organisation A. You are asked to lead an internal audit of A's quality management system. It has a head office in Plant A1 and a second Plant A2 nearby. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, production in A2 was discontinued and it was rented to a logistics organisation B, not related to A. There are no A employees working in A2. Organisation A expects to reassume production in A2 as soon as possible.
Which of the following actions would you consider appropriate when planning the internal audit of A's quality management system?
According to the ISO 9001 standard, which one of the following is a defined responsibility of top management?
Which two of the following auditors would not participate in a first-party audit?
What is the responsibility of the audit committee during an internal audit?
Whistlekleen is a national dry cleaning and laundry company with 50 shops. You are conducting a surveillance audit of the Head Office and are sampling customer complaints. 80% of complaints originate from five shops in the same region. Most of these complaints
relate to customer laundry not being cleaned as customers require. The Quality Manager tells you that these are the oldest shops in the company. The cleaning equipment needs replacing but the company cannot afford it now. You learn that the shop managers were
told to dismiss most of the complaints because of the poor quality of the laundered materials.
On raising the matter with senior management, you are told that there are plans to replace the equipment in these shops over the next five years.
You raised a nonconformity against clause 8.5.1 of ISO 9001.
Based on the scenario, select the three options which best describe the evidence for raising such a nonconformity.
Scenario 4:
TD Advertising is a print management company based in Chicago. The company offers design services, digital printing, storage, and distribution. As TD expanded, its management recognized that success depended on adopting new technologies and improving quality.
To ensure customer satisfaction and quality improvement, the company decided to pursue ISO 9001 certification.
After implementing the QMS, TD hired a well-known certification body for an audit. Anne Key was appointed as the audit team leader. She received a document listing the audit team members, audit scope, criteria, duration, and audit engagement limits.
Anne reviewed the document and approved the audit mandate. The certification body and TD’s top management signed the certification agreement.
Before contacting TD, Anne reviewed the audit scope and noticed that TD made changes to it due to the adoption of new printing equipment. However, Anne disagreed with the changes, stating they would affect the audit timeline. She considered withdrawing from the audit.
The audit team members were selected based on their knowledge of the legal and other regulations that TD is subject to. Is this acceptable?
When should the certification body accept the audit?
Scenario 2:
Bell is a Canadian food manufacturing company that operates globally. Their main products include nuts, dried fruits, and confections. Bell has always prioritized product quality and has maintained a good reputation for many years. However, the company's production error rate increased significantly, leading to more customer complaints.
To increase efficiency and customer satisfaction, Bell implemented a Quality Management System (QMS) based on ISO 9001. The top management established a QMS implementation team comprising five middle managers from various departments, including Leslie, the quality manager.
Leslie was responsible for assigning responsibilities and authorities for QMS-related roles. He also suggested including a top management representative in the QMS team, but top management declined due to other priorities.
The team defined the QMS scope as:
"The scope of the QMS includes all activities related to food processing."
Leslie established a quality policy and presented it to the team for review before top management approval. Top management also proposed a new strategy for handling customer complaints, requiring biweekly customer surveys to monitor customer perceptions.
In scenario 2, the team determined the QMS scope by taking into account only the requirements of top management. Is this compliant with ISO 9001?
"A set of interrelated or interlacing elements of an organization to establish policies and objectives, and processes to achieve those objectives" is the definition of a/an:
Scenario 5: Mechanical-Electro (ME) Audit Stages
Mechanical-Electro, better known as ME, is an American company that provides mechanical and electrical services in China. Their services range from air-conditioning systems, ventilation systems, plumbing, to installation of electrical equipment in automobile plants, electronic manufacturing facilities, and food processing plants.
Due to the fierce competition from local Chinese companies and failing to meet customer requirements, ME's revenue dropped significantly. In addition, customers' trust and confidence in the company decreased, and the reputation of the company was damaged.
In light of these developments, the top management of ME decided to implement a quality management system (QMS) based on ISO 9001. After having an effective QMS in place for over a year, they applied for a certification audit.
A team of four auditors was appointed for the audit, including Li Na as the audit team leader. Initially, the audit team conducted a general review of ME's documents, including the quality policy, operational procedures, inventory lists, QMS scope, process documentation, training records, and previous audit reports.
Li Na stated that this would allow the team to maintain a systematic and structured approach to gathering documents for all audit stages. While reviewing the documented information, the team observed some minor issues but did not identify any major nonconformities. Therefore, Li Na claimed that it was not necessary to prepare a report or conduct a meeting with ME's representatives at that stage of the audit. She stated that all areas of concern would be discussed in the next phase of the audit.
Following the on-site activities and the opening meeting with ME's top management, the audit team structured an audit test plan to verify whether ME’s QMS conformed to Clause 8.2.1 (Customer Communication) of ISO 9001.
To do so, they gathered information through group interviews and sampling. Li Na conducted interviews with departmental managers in the first group and then with top management. In addition, she chose a sampling method that sufficiently represented customer complaints from both areas of ME's operations.
The team members were responsible for the sampling procedure. They selected a sample size of 4 out of 45 customer complaints received weekly for electrical services and 2 out of 10 complaints for mechanical services.
Afterward, the audit team evaluated the evidence against the audit criteria and generated the audit findings.
According to scenario 5, Li Na conducted group interviews with departmental managers and top management by herself. Is this in accordance with audit best practices?
