Secure handling of property belonging to customers

Organization's top management ensures that responsibilities for relevant quality roles are assigned, communicated and understood within the organization. Along with responsibilities the roles usually require authorizations for certain actions, so that the responsibilities can successfully be filled.

When necessary, these roles need to be defined also in the process sequence in relevant steps, e.g. who can carry out a review or acceptance step in a process.

Top management shall clearly assign the responsibility at least for:

• QMS ownership (ensuring that the QMS conforms to selected requirements)
• process ownership (ensuring that processes deliver their intended outputs)
• QMS result communication (reporting on the performance of the QMS and on opportunities for improvement)
• customer focus ownership (ensuring the promotion of customer focus throughout the organization)
• QMS continuity (ensuring that the integrity of the QMS is maintained when changes to the QMS are planned and implemented)

The organization needs to exercise care with property (e.g. confidential data, personal data, materials, components, tools, equipment, premises, IP) belonging to customers or external providers while it is under the organization’s control or being used by the organization. The organization should describe general rules for doing this.

If there is property provided by customers or external providers, that is being incorporated into own products / services, the organization needs to have a process for separately identifying, verifying and protecting the property.

When any external property is lost, damaged or otherwise found to be unsuitable for use, the organization shall report this to the customer or external provider and retain documented information on what has occurred.

Quality-aware personnel are one of the key resources for constantly meeting customer requirements. The organization ensures that personnel are aware of:

• the quality policy
• relevant quality objectives
• their contribution to the effectiveness of the QMS (e.g. adherence to processes, improvement ideas, communicating to other personnel, taking responsibility), including the benefits of improved performance
• the implications of not conforming with the QMS requirements (e.g. faulty products or customer complaints)

Organizations often create training programs or other regular personnel quality sessions to help people understand their work's connection to quality.

Competent personnel are one of the key resources for providing high quality products / services. To ensure the competence of personnel, the organization:

• determines which personnel affects the performance of the QMS
• determines the necessary competence of these people
• ensures that these people are competent on the basis of appropriate education, training, or experience
• takes actions to acquire the necessary competence (e.g. training, mentoring, reassignment, hiring), and evaluates the actions taken

It can be relevant to define required competences separately for:

• QMS key team
• other QMS users (e.g. process owners)
• all employees

Appropriate documented information needs to be available as evidence of personnel competence.

The organization has determined which issues related to the quality management system need to be communicated on a regular basis. The plan must include the answers, e.g. to the following points:

• What issues are communicated? These can be e.g. new or changed quality objectives
• How and when to communicate? What channels are used and how often?
• To whom is communicated? How often for quality executives, how often for the entire organization or partners.
• Who takes part? Who has the right to message and from whom, for example, messages should be approved.

Task owner will take care of the implementation of the plan and regular evaluation of its effectiveness.