Our East African partner Quality Plus based in Nairobi continues to grow the quality market across East Africa. As part of the our World Quality Day celebrations James Gathage, Chief Exec of Quality Plus, has delivered two five day lead auditor course focused on agriculture. James comments “Interest continues to grow in quality management systems for the tea and coffee industry and with the Kenyan Government putting a clear emphasis on risk management as part of quality management I expect to be busy in 2012!”

We are delighted to annouce our new partnership with Advent-IM to add value through joint working to meet the needs of our customers. Advent IM is the UK’s leading independent information security and physical security consultancy. They specialise in holistic security management solutions for Information Security, HMG Information Assurance, Business Continuity, PCI-DSS and Physical Security and have a proven track record of successful certifications. www.advent-im.co.uk.  Graham Sadler TMS Insight Managing Director comments “By combining the unique but complimentary skills, products and services of our organisations we can offer more to our customers based on a shared ethos and values.  It’s an exciting time and we look forward to growing our market share together”.

The University of Piraeus based in Athens,  was founded in 1938 under the title of the “School for Industrial Studies”, by the Industrialists and Tradesmen Association. In 1989, the “Graduate School of Industrial Studies” was renamed the University of Piraeus. Today it is one of leading universities in Greece.

TMS international partner Advent have secured a contract to provide the TMS Insight IRCA approved ISO 9001 lead auditor course as part of a masters programme.  Dimitris Vergas Advent Managing Director comments “We are delighted to be working with the University to provide high quality learning and development to the Greek business men and women of tomorrow. Our partnership with TMS continues to grow as we secure new markets for shared products and services.”

Kevin McElduff Group Director comments “I had the privelege of working with the Kronospan team at their Chirk UK headquarters to help them launch their integrated auditor programme across the standards 9001, 18001 and 14001.  Their operations are 24/7 and the scale of production is huge. The site presents multiple quality, environmental and health and safety challenges and their new programme moves them from a one dimensional commpliance approach to an audit function that adds value and drives continuous improvement.”

Kronospan are one of the UK’s largest producers of chipboard and MDF and use both virgin timber and recycled wood in production. Over 200 hundred vehicle movements take place on the site each day and they are register as a COMAH site

Rita Obayojie tha Managing Director of our international partner TRAC Nigeria is visting the UK in September.  Nigeria is a major world power in the oil and gas sector and Rita will be in Aberdeen, the UK centre for oil exploration,  working with her customers.  She is meeting TMSi Group Director Kevin McElduff in London on September 10th. Kevin comments “I am looking forward to seeing Rita and finding out more about the Nigerian and west african markets. TRAC Nigeria deliver a number of our courses under licence in the oil and gas industry and I am keen to build links with our UK customers in the same sector.”

We’re on the second day of our popular ISO 9001 internal quality auditors course at the Connaught Hotel, Wolverhampton. Students from the SI Group, Culina Logistics, Amtico and the Defence College of Aeronatutical Engineering are auditing goods inwards and goods inwards inspection at Wilsons our training case study.  They will be interviewing key personnel including the Purchasing, Quality and Goods Inwards Managers. The course tutor Kevin McElduff comments “They have worked really hard in day one and day two is all about practice, practice, practice. They learn a huge amount by applying the theory from day one in real situations in day two”

Next year will see the auditing standard published. It’s being drafted by one of the ISO technical committees and will, at long last, be the generic audit standard for any management system. The present ISO 19011:2002 is for quality and environment but everyone treats it as the generic audit standard. This is a really good step forward and is long overdue.
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The new standard focuses far more on RISK in the management system and is consistent with the same risk focus in ISO 9001:2008. There is a recognition of the importance of clear audit objectives, scope and criteria so that each audit adds value to the performance and improvement of the management system.

The new draft standard has also recognised that audit evidence can be gathered over the phone or by video link and this is a commonsense move and there is a new information strategy annexe to give guidance on sampling as part of the audit evidence.  This should strengthen the auditors hand significantly but does have implications for audit feasibility and resources.

The final stand in the new draft is around competence. It has always been there and we will see the extent that IRCA toughen up this aspect of their requirements when internal and lead auditor courses are revised.  Overall these are very welcome developments.

PRIORITY S.A., one of the leading consulting firms in Greece has worked in partnership with TMS Insight since 1999 for the implementation of Internal Auditor and Lead Auditor courses. Based in Athens PRIORITY has successfully completed more than 30 IRCA certified courses in the field of ISO 9001 (Quality) and ISO 14001 (Environment) Management Systems. The autumn training programme is set out in our training diary.

The standards that make up the ISO 9000 series are now on different review cycles with a five-year gap between ISO 9000 and ISO 9004. The working group for the series, ISO/TC 176, wants to harmonise these cycles in order to restore their interdependency.  There is an on line survey of users being hosted by the Chartered Quality Institute that you are invited to take part in. It can be accessed at the link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KCHRZ5W

Any changes to this family of standards are a few years away but we need practitioners to influence and shape any changes to continuously improve ISO 9000 series abilty to continuously improve and sustain business success

More and more companies and organisations want to integrate their management systems based on quality, environment and health and safety.  It’s the same processes that impact on quality, the environment and the health and safety of our customers and employees.  In response TMS has developed and piloted a three day integrated auditor course for the three standards ISO 9001, 14001 and BS OHSAS 18001. Graham Sadler TMS Managing director says “This is a positive development recognising that the core auditing skills are common to all of the strands of management systems. This course offers the very best value for money and promotes full integration and improvement of management systems.”