IN TODAY'S cyber-world, it makes sense to integrate ISO procedures into a company's IT (information technology) network, according to Sugie Govender, chief executive officer of Transglobal.
A refreshing move from a system where bulky manuals were littered around the offices, he added, difficult to read easily, and a manual system which was prone to human error. From this to the clean, paper-free, automatic environment of cyber-space.
What we've done is to place the whole system in an electronic format, he told FTW. This is designed to make ISO more user-friendly, and to trigger-off automatic ISO non-conformance warning signals in the Transglobal operations system.
These non-conformance signals are forwarded to me, and allow me to institute the appropriate correction-prevention procedures.
The fact that the signals are automatically produced when procedures are not followed also has administrative benefits, he added.
In the other method of working you needed to have someone supervising the operations pool, said Govender, identifying the incorrect procedures, and instructing the operator to fill in a non-conformance report.
This had all the clumsiness and error-prone disadvantages of a manual system. All the procedures are now integrated into our operations systems - and react entirely independently of the operator.
Foreign investigation by Govender revealed that there seemed to be little international awareness of running ISO electronically; no guidelines to follow; and no off-the-shelf computer programmes available.
We therefore wrote the whole thing from scratch, in-house, he said, linking in the new procedural processes to our present systems.
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