What do you do when during a 4 days IATF 16949 Online audit your team from the manufacturing site located on another continent becomes unavailable due to pandemic issues?
🔴 Do you hit the panic button?
✅ Or do you take a deep breath and relay on your contingency plan?
This is what I did! I have activated the contingency plan very well planned with my team before the audit and we have continued the audit as if nothing has happened and a very good result has been achieved.
We have applied the PDCA while developing a Contingency Plan for the online audits that has been for a major change of certification audit context. Our objective was clear: organize the audit to ensure the Quality Management System is well presented to the auditors and there are no reasons of stopping the audit due to technical issues.
Here is what we have done:
Ø Plan: We have planned every step of the audit and every process audited by identifying risks, impact and probability of occurrence
Ø Do: We have defined clear actions for al scenarios identified during Plan faze with responsible and deadline
Ø Check: We have verified the effectiveness of the activities defined by simulations and internal audits
Ø Act: We have improved our contingency plan based on the results we have obtained during check activity
Lesson Learned have been transferred from one manufacturing site to another one and the reactions have been faster and more efficient at each new audit.
This pandemic has had a major impact on us as humans, on our companies and of course on our teams. For the leaders, the 2020 has brought challenges that have changed completely our internal and external context. We have had to fast adapt to new reality, and we needed to managed remote teams, we needed to change communication behaviors and we needed to find new ways to support our teams.
Being physical present as in the past was not possible anymore but a strong culture of quality-based leadership and a strong team have made the difference!
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