Clause 8.1 General

“The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.”

Thomas J. Peters (American Author and consultant, birth 1942)

The previous sections were related to organizing activities in such a way that customer's expectations are consistently met. An organization that has met those requirements has the controls in place, but does not necessarily know if the controls are working. In order for an organization to improve, it needs to have information on where it stands today.

• How satisfied are the customers? Does the organization actually meet all requirements?
• Are activities (processes) effectively and efficiently organized?
• Does the product actually meet the expectations? And,
• what happens if the product does not meet the expectations?

The answers to these questions are related to the requirements in this section. Improvement will result from analysing this information and taking the necessary corrective and preventive action.

The information that organizations need does not necessarily have to be sophisticated. Usually a few crucial pieces of information or a short summary can give enough information to determine if action is necessary. Organizations should define: what is the crucial information that they need?

Standard requires you to plan and implement monitoring, measurement, analysis and improvement activities (read processes) required to evidence:

• product conformity to requirements
• conformity to quality management system
• continually improve effectiveness of quality management system

You should determine a suitable statistical method. Check Analysis of data (8.4) for details