Continual Improvement

Clause 8.5 is all about improvement.  To get the ball rolling, the standard starts with; 8.5.1 continual improvement.  Not just sometimes, always.

Your manual and system should say something like this.  Your company name continually improves (remember, not continuously, see later in the blog) the effectiveness of the quality management system through the use of the quality policy, quality objectives, audit results, analysis of data, corrective and preventive actions and management review.

An eloquent summary of all things improvement.  Your quality policy therefore must refer to it.  By definition within the standard, means your quality objectives need to be hard wired to it, with the standard then going on to refer to some of the improvement tools already mandated in the standard; audits, data, corrective action, preventive action and management reviews.  Each of these aspects have requirements for planning and closed loop actions to ensure they are continual.  For example, one of the inputs of management review is the follow up of previous actions / reviews.  Nicely continual.

No requirements for documentation here other than the above references and tie-ins.  I default to the ‘road map’ and move onto the next clause.

Now there is heaps of debate around the word ‘continual’ and that some of us less educated, interchange it with the word continuous.  Now here is my spin on this controversy.  Yes, they are different words, with different meaning but the split is; continuous means uninterrupted (without end), whilst continual means frequently (without pause).  But who really cares.  As always, it is the intent of that counts, so get on with it lots.