Types of Audience Decisions 59requirements, and a procedure for implementing those requirements—the supervisor decided to
disregard the directive. When the supervisor read the revised version about a week later, he came
away ready to comply. Notice that the writer of the revision explicitly addresses each of the decision
criteria that are typically relevant for compliance decisions. Notice also that the writer of the revised
directive replaces the vague requirements of the original with a more specifi c, actionable, and test-
able requirement—a mock quality audit to be conducted by supervisors prior to the offi cial audit.
ORIGINAL DIRECTIVE WITH A SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS
From: Quality Systems
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 1:15PM
To: ‘ALL CALIFORNIA EMPLOYEES’
Subject: GENERAL NOTICE - QUALITY SYSTEM ASSESSMENTS [1. OK, another general
notice. What’s this one about?]
Totalt Kvalitet Tjanster 2. What the heck is that?, OUR ISO 9001 REGISTRAR, IS
SCHEDULED TO PERFORM TWO ASSESSMENTS OF OUR QUALITY SYSTEM IN 2014. [3. It must
be a company that will audit us. Never heard of them.]TKT will be here at our California
facilities in November to continue the periodic assessments that have already been
performed at our Nevada facilities over the past two years. In January, TKT will be
conducting a “re-certification” assessment across the firm including our San Jose facility.
The Quality Systems group of Total Quality Operations [4. This must be a subgroup. They
don’t really need to distinguish because most people don’t know who’s in one group or
the other. They don’t explain why we should care.]will coordinate the assessments. To
ensure we are ready, the following activities are planned:
- Briefings to Senior Management [5. Not me.]
- Making Training and Awareness Material Available Online [6. I think it is already.]
- Forming and training a team of experts from various departments to guide/escort TKT
Auditors. [7. This won’t affect me.]
In the mean time, management and supervision should ensure: - Procedures and work instructions are current and available and employees know how
to access them. [8. Supervision does not have time to update work instruction manuals.
We have too many fires to put out. This is not a fire.] - Employees know and understand our Quality Policy. [9. Do they want us to quiz all of
our employees?] - Corrective actions are timely and effective. [10. Corrective actions for what? I assume
they want us to discipline employees who aren’t up to snuff on the Quality Policy.] - Records are properly[11. Define properly.]stored, are current, and accurately reflect
required data. [12. This says “ensure records accurately reflect required data” – how
general is that? Quality records? Job records? I don’t know what they mean, and
therefore, I don’t know what required data they’re talking about.] - General compliance to any of our Quality System Elements that apply to your
functional area.
Quality Systems will continue to communicate with managers and supervisors to provide
up-to-date information on the progress of the assessments.
Rob Morton, Manager
Quality Systems
[13. The quality policy is frankly a bunch of lofty statements like “We are dedicated to
providing the highest quality, lowest cost, most dependable products available which
exceed all of our customers’ expectations.” In real day-to-day operations, it is pretty
meaningless. We all do our jobs to the best of our abilities. The only thing of real value is
the standard work procedures, but that is not kept current so even its value is limited.
- I won’t take any action on this notice. I’ll wait until I hear some requirements.]