Your organisation must undertake planning in order to determine how its management system objectives will be achieved. This planning includes determining the work required in order for the organisation to realise its objectives - you should look for evidence that effective planning is taking place to support the achievement of your organisation’s objectives.
Additionally, your organisation must determine how it will evaluate the work done, including the use of indicators, and whenever possible, to integrate these planned actions into its business processes. The use of indicators needs to be audited in detail in order to determine whether:
- There are objectives based on sound information;
- Indicators are really related to the corresponding objectives;
- Statistical tools are needed to define and to monitor objectives;
- Indicators reach the expected values;
- The organisation can assure that the objective has been achieved.
Establishing an action plan for each objective may require effort on the part of the personnel at relevant levels within your organisation. To ensure the progress of the action plan and a coordinated effort, a target leader should be selected for each target.
The target leader will be responsible for ensuring a target is achieved within the specified timeframe. Once the action plan is established, you must implement it. You may find that the following suggestions will help foster a cooperative effort in accomplishing the plan:
- Involve your employees early in establishing and carrying out the action plans;
- Communicate the expectations and responsibilities laid out in the action plans to those who need to know;
- Build on the plans and programmes you now have for building management system compliance;
- Keep it simple;
- Focus on continual improvement of management programmes over time.
The management programme should be revised regularly to reflect changes in your organisation’s objectives and targets. Track all new or modified operations, activities, and/or products in case the management programme needs to be amended to reflect these changes.
Review a set of interrelated objectives, ensuring that they are mutually consistent and that they are aligned with the strategic direction of your organisation. Documented information of objectives typically is in the form of a description or matrix of the objective and corresponding means and timeframe to achieve the objectives.
You should ensure that your planning activity takes into consideration the following points:
- Identification of processes, resources, and skills needed to achieve the intended outcomes of your management system;
- Identification of suitable verification criteria at appropriate stages;
- Compatibility of design, production, inspection and testing;
- The confirmation of criteria of acceptability for all features and requirements;
- Details of calibration of any special measuring or test equipment to be used.
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