ISO 9001 Controlling forms
Posted by | Posted in Marketing and Advertising | Posted on 03-12-2009
Auditing hundreds of companies of different sizes in various industries, I found that control of forms is one of the notorious issues with maintenance of ISO 9001:2008 QMS. Various companies, by a strange reason, treat forms differently than other instructions. This leaves forms not controlled. ISO 9001, element 4.2.3, requires: “Documents required by the quality management system shall be controlled.” Now let’s find out if a form is the same as a “document”
Forms and tables are frequently used as quality management system documents. Very often, it is not necessary to write a traditional instruction with the purpose, scope and instruction sections, if a simple table is sufficient to provide these instructions. One of the typical non-conformities that companies get during audits of their quality management systems is against forms that are not part of the documentation system.
Frequently, being asked about not controlled forms, my clients reply: This is “just a form”. I always wonder why a form should be treated differently than any other instruction or a document. If a form is not controlled, how would we know that we need it to begin with? If a form is not part of your ISO 9001 QMS, it cannot be referenced! If your forms are not controlled, how would anyone know that you use the latest revision? Well, exactly what is a form? A quick test will help answer this question. If we have a list of directions telling us to:
