In this article, Auditor Training Online's director and triple certified real-world auditor, Jackie Stapleton sits down and explains the importance of Clause 10 to any Management Systems.
No more guessing or confusion!
Clause 10 refers to Improvement. There are just 3 sub-clauses in clause 10 and they are common across all 3 standards for quality, environment, and OH&S, with just a slight twist for OH&S.
I always say that Clause 10.2 Nonconformity and corrective action (and throw in Incident for OH&S) is the core clause in this section.
This is all about what steps to take when a nonconformance is identified or reported. These steps include dealing with the consequences first, then evaluating to identify the cause, and then implementing corrective action to prevent recurrence or occurrence elsewhere.
This is really the final loop in the Standards because despite all your best efforts with systems and processes in place to prevent nonconformances or incidents, sometimes things still go wrong.
However, these are great opportunities to review what has happened and implement changes – all feeding into continual improvement.
Which is a great segue to the other 2 subclauses in clause 10 which are all about identifying and selecting opportunities for improvement and continually improving the management system. And I always say that if you are conforming with all of the requirements throughout the Standards you will be continually improving as a natural progression of your management system.
I do hope that this gives you a high-level idea of what clause 10’s intent is without too many nitty-gritty details.
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