Infrastructure and Work Environment

I just don’t get these clauses.  Well I get the clauses, but don’t really know why they are in the standard.  Well I know why, but it begs the question why don’t we have the other one million company attributes in the standard that we need for product, service conformance or even that nasty little thing called customer service??

So here is the cut and paste from the standard;
6.3 Infrastructure.  A company has determined, provided and will maintain the infrastructure needed to achieve conformity to product requirements.  Infrastructure includes, as applicable;
a) buildings, workspace and associated utilities,
b) process equipment (both hardware and software), and
c) supporting services (such as transport or communication).
6.4 Work environment.  A company has determined and will manage the work environment needed to achieve conformity to product requirements.

Do the words, ‘a big, fat, der’ come into your mind?  Some of our auditing colleagues have grabbed on to the word ‘maintain’ in the first paragraph of 6.3 to mean maintenance programs, service records etc.  But have you noticed there are no requirements for process, procedure or records?  So let’s assume that every facet of a company will in some impact on the quality of your product and service and that during the planning and continuous cycles, any ‘weakness’ will be identified and rectified and preventively planned for in the future.  For mine, a checklist item in management review for these two aspects should get the job done.