The Nine-Month Deadline and the 60-Page Manual

No - reject the plan as proposed, but not the consultant's help.

Three reasons:

• Timing: a 12-month project against a 9-month customer deadline fails by design. The plan must be built backwards from the audit date with decision gates (month 3 gap closure, month 6 internal audit, month 8 management review, month 9 certification audit).
• Documentation-heavy approach: ISO 9001:2015 requires only the documented information the standard specifies plus what the organization determines as necessary for effectiveness (7.5.1). A 60-page manual and 28 procedures add cost and reinforce the 'quality department' perception. Retain process descriptions, a small set of procedures where their absence would risk nonconformity, and the records needed to prove control.
• Leadership: 5.1.1 makes top management accountable. Marta should secure a steering committee chaired by the CEO, a one-page charter with scope, objectives, budget, owners and milestones, and a written commitment on her time (backfill or reallocate complaint work).

First 30 days: confirm scope and processes (4.3, 4.4); convert the gap analysis into a process-based action plan with named owners; agree the resource case (EUR 45,000 is plausible if internal resources are used and documentation is minimized); launch a communication plan (7.4) with a CEO briefing to all supervisors. Track progress by decision gate, not by documents produced.

Scope and exclusions. Under 4.3 the scope must state the products and services, the boundary, and justify any clause determined not applicable. A workable statement: 'Machining and supply of precision components to customer drawings, including control of outsourced heat treatment and surface finishing.'

• 8.3 (design and development) can be excluded only if Precision has no design responsibility and does not change customer designs. If engineers propose material or process changes that alter a customer drawing, that is still customer-owned design, but the change must be controlled under 8.5.6. If the company originates any design for any customer, 8.3 applies and cannot be excluded.
• 8.4 cannot be excluded. Heat treatment and plating are outsourced processes; they remain within the QMS and must be controlled (8.4.1), with selection criteria, monitoring, and defined responsibility for approval and re-approval.
• The scope must not be a list of clauses chosen to avoid difficult requirements. Customer-specific requirements and customer-owned tooling (8.5.3) belong in the scope discussion.
• Test the exclusion against the actual order flow: if a customer order triggers design activity, the exclusion is invalid and will be challenged at Stage 1.

Treat it as a leadership and communication problem, not an insubordination problem.

5.1.1 requires top management to promote the process approach and risk-based thinking; 5.3 assigns process responsibilities. If production managers see the QMS as a parallel quality-department system, implementation will fail at 8.5.1, because the shop floor controls the conditions that produce conformity.

Actions:

1. Ask the CEO to restate the customer deadline and its consequence (loss of the Tier 1 contract) at the supervisor briefing, and to assign each production manager a named process (machining, final inspection) with a deliverable and a date.
2. Replace clause-by-clause training with a 45-minute session per area using the area's own data: scrap, rework, late orders, overdue calibration. Show what they must do differently, not which document to write.
3. Give supervisors a small, visible role early - owning the shift-level objective and the nonconformity log - so the QMS produces something useful to them.
4. Escalate through the steering committee if the production manager continues to block; 5.1.1 accountability sits with the CEO, not Marta.

Evidence of change: supervisors can state their process objective and the last nonconformity they acted on; production brings data to the steering meeting; the production manager owns an action with a date.