By All Standards

Transforming Challenges into Wins: Mastering Non-Conformance Management

• Auva Certification • Episode 5

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Summary

In this episode, Paula Brady, COO of Auva, discusses the often misunderstood concept of non-conformities in business operations. She emphasises that non-conformities should not be viewed negatively but rather as opportunities for improvement. The conversation covers the importance of reporting non-conformities, creating a culture of continuous improvement, and the role of leadership in fostering an environment where issues can be openly discussed and addressed. Paula shares success stories of organisations that have effectively managed non-conformities, leading to significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. The episode highlights the need for effective communication and collaboration between teams and suppliers to resolve issues and improve overall business performance.


Takeaways

  • -Non-conformities are opportunities for improvement, not failures.
  • -Reporting issues is crucial for organisational learning.
  • -Everyone in a company has a role in the management system.
  • -Creating a culture of improvement requires training and awareness.
  • -Leadership must support and encourage reporting of non-conformities.
  • -Linking non-conformances to business performance can drive change.
  • -Effective communication is key to resolving issues.
  • -Success stories show the benefits of managing non-conformities.
  • -Trends in non-conformities can highlight systemic issues.
  • -Collaboration with suppliers can lead to mutual benefits.


Key Links

 @auvacertification  

Auva Website: www.auva.com

Apple Podcast:  https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/by-all-standards/id1771677594

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/79OUNj3vY9dmESR3okwHJa?si=871837f56dc149b6

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@auvacertification/podcasts

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/auva-certification-ltd 

Instagram: @auvacert

Michael Venner:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelvenner-isocertificationexpert/ 

Paula Brady:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-brady-15b59519/ 


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Non-Conformities

02:44 Understanding Non-Conformities

05:39 The Importance of Reporting Non-Conformities

08:27 Cultural Shift in Organizations

11:35 Linking Non-Conformities to Improvement

14:39 The Role of Internal Audits

17:51 Real-World Examples of Non-Conformities

20:24 Conclusion and Key Takeaways

26:16 The Importance of Internal Audits

28:24 Addressing Non-Conformances Effectively

31:35 Identifying Costly Non-Conformances

35:30 Finding Big Hitters in Non-Conformance

39:31 The Role of Leadership in Compliance

41:19 Success Stories in Non-Conformance Management

48:34 Supplier Relationships and Communication

51:38 The Need for Actionable Meeting Minutes


Michael Venner (00:17)
OK, hello, welcome everybody to the next episode of our podcast. This time around we've got Paula, Paula Brady, our COO of Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland, And we're going to talk about the benefits of non-conformities if there's such a thing. so Paula, if you want to introduce yourself.

Paula Brady (00:39)
Yeah, as Mike said, I'm Paula and I'm COO of Northern Ireland and Ireland Operations for Auva Jack of all trades, master of none as some people say, but no, I'm here to talk about the joy that is Non-conformances and the benefit that we should be able to get out of them. I think they get a really bad rap and it's sort of putting the record straight on why they're there and why it's important.

Michael Venner (01:04)
Do you to just give an intro on how you kind of got into this first? Because how long have we known each other? It's probably 20 years? 20 years, yeah.

Paula Brady (01:09)
Yeah. It's over.

20 years at this point in time. So, yes. So 20 years ago or just over, I got involved with ISO standards. I was working for a building contractor at the time. And at that time, as many people would know in Northern Ireland, it became sort of a prerequisite for a lot of public body works for the contractors to hold at least health and safety, environmental and quality standards. So I started work on that for a builder. And that was sort of

what I was tasked to do and I got really interested in it. Went off and done my lead auditors, our certification body at the time, Mike worked for and a few of the others and I expressed an interest and I started to do a few audits. think timing was just pretty perfect. I was interested and you guys were kind of needing somebody to take up a bit of the slack as you were growing in Northern Ireland. So I started doing a few audits and really got into it and kind of split my time between

working for the contractor and doing a few audits and then went off to have my first baby.

I decided that was the time to kind of take a leap of faith and went out on my own and audited since and also done a little bit of consultancy until November 2020 when I was approached by the guys at Auva to see if I'd be interested in sort of heading up the Ireland operations so that's kind of when I what is it Gamekeeper? Poacher turned Gamekeeper? Yeah.

Michael Venner (02:40)
yeah, something like that. Poach to turn gank here. Yeah. Jeez, all those years ago. That's it.

Paula Brady (02:44)
So I moved to the dark side, seems. Ciao! It's four years this incoming month. So the 16th of November was our official start date for Auva Ireland. So I can't believe those four years have just disappeared in a blink.

Michael Venner (02:50)
Yeah.

So was just as we were in Covid that must have been? Was it end of 2020?

Paula Brady (03:04)
just coming out, yeah, was coming out of the first kind of lockdowns and things were still fairly sticky. I think timing wise, it was just really good for me. I think we'd been stuck at home from the March of that year. So it kind of, when the opportunity presented itself, I was, I think, ready for a change. So haven't looked back since much, much.

Michael Venner (03:21)
Hmm.

much.

Paula Brady (03:28)
But now I've been doing this for 20 odd years at this stage now and I have to say every day is a learning day.

And as you would say that too, Mike, you go out to companies, you learn something new, somebody tells you something you weren't aware of. And it's probably the most fascinating job to be in and a privileged job to be able to go in, have a chat to companies, see how they run, see some of the companies I've been getting into for 10 plus years and the developments in that time have just been unbelievable. It's so, good.

Michael Venner (03:36)
yes.

Hmm. It is interesting. Yeah. I think when people ask us when we meet people for the first time, what do you do? And we tell them, and they're like, but actually it's really interesting, isn't it? Like you say, the development over all those years and everything is quite, it's quite nice to see.

Paula Brady (04:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, when you actually get into it, absolutely is. But there is a running joke in our friends group. A few of us now do this, but at the time, guy I've known for years, we didn't realize we both did it, but we realized at a wedding and everybody just drifted away from us because we were like chat, chat, chat, And they were like, this is terrible.

Michael Venner (04:29)
That's a boring conversation, we'll leave that one.

Paula Brady (04:34)
Yeah, now it's even worse because my husband's involved in it now too so that you can imagine dinner conversation.

Michael Venner (04:41)
I bet you don't get invited out anymore do you? That's it, leave the Brady's alone, yeah, get out the way. Okay, cool, yeah, so we're going to talk about non-conformities. Obviously yeah, people get worried of them don't they I suppose, and they hear the word non-conformity and they panic, but like you said there's nothing to really worry about, there's benefits to be gained from it really.

Paula Brady (04:43)
No. They're just like, no.

There's a reason that there's clauses of the standards that deal with non-conformities and people are sort of really thinking it's a very negative thing and let's not get a non-conformance. Let's not let's, you know, go through an audit and get nothing. You know, they're kind of missing the point to somewhat. know, it's probably initially good to understand what a non-conformance is because we use the term non-conformance because that's what appears in the standard. But people call them many different things.

And you see that as you do more and more audits and you're out there with industry, you know, and people have kind of come up with their different way of presenting them as, you know, problems, issues, corrective action, you know.

things to sort out. I've seen some sort of not so PC terms for them as well, but it kind of to make it bit more fun and a bit more approachable. Like a non-conformance is something that's not just quite going right in either how you want to do things or how the standard expects you to do it. And that can only be a positive thing to identify it and then do something about it rather than ignore it and let it repeat and repeat and repeat.

you know, causing a lot of time issues, time wastage. So, you know, to get it out there and identify it can only be a positive thing. But that takes a little bit of getting your head around. And I find on a lot of initial audits, I spend a lot of time on the stage ones and stage twos trying to explain that to the companies to say, look, really, this is your critical path. This is how you're going to get your improvement.

Michael Venner (06:30)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (06:43)
If you don't really enforce this, that you're not going to sort of identify the areas that you want to improve upon and do something about it. Loads of companies are great at seeing issues and doing a containment. so, you know, I use an analogy and a lot of my companies that I've been will know this one because I use it quite often. You know, it's like falling into a hole in a building site. And the first thing somebody does, fill in the hole or put a barrier around it and that they kind of end it there.

Michael Venner (07:10)
Yeah.

Paula Brady (07:11)
But what the process does is really makes you ask why it was there in the first place. And if you tackle that, means nobody's going to fall into any more holes on your building site. And that's as simple as it gets that it's about bringing it beyond the containment and looking at, we call it root cause, looking at why it happened in the first place and addressing that. And that's where your improvement comes from. So yeah, it's definitely a positive thing.

Michael Venner (07:35)
Yeah, because the client I was at last week, called them and it's something the consultant does in all his systems. He calls it business improvement, business improvement recommendation or something like that report or something like that business improvement report, something like that. But yeah, basically it's something that's not right.

something isn't right with their system or anything like that or they've had a complaint and it's business improvement that's a good way of looking at it really.

Paula Brady (08:04)
great way of looking at it because it gives a very positive spin to it that yes there's an issue but we're gonna do something about it and it kind of pushes that proactive thing I've seen that quite a bit where even an action register it kind of where that's where you log it it means that you're gonna do something about it it's not just gonna be logged and you know it's like have you had many complaints yeah we've had tons you're like great

What's happened about them? They're like, well, we'll just put them on the record and you're going, no. the whole point of it is to see why it's happening in the first place and making sure that you're not repeating yourself time and time again. You know, it's yeah, there's a reason it appears in the quality standard twice. A lot of people link them to product and in process inspections of manufacturing something. And they're like, especially a service industry will be like, that doesn't really apply to me. You're like, no, it absolutely does. It comes in later in the standards as well.

in clause 10 because it's about

you know, doing something more, your issues come from lots of different areas. It's not just from production, manufacturing, related to product. It's about everything that your business does. And I would say quite regularly to any business, it's not just one thing. It's any issue that you're dealing with in your business should go on a log or register so that you can trend it. You can look and see if it's creeping up again and again and fix the problem to make life easy.

Michael Venner (09:24)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (09:28)
Life easier is what these standards are all about, which not everybody gets, first off.

Michael Venner (09:33)
I think some people think that every time you get an issue or non-conformance whatever you want to call it that you've got to throw loads of things at it to really dig down and often you don't you know if sometimes it's just we track it we log it we trend analyze it and then we can do some deeper dives and put in some long-term fixes so yeah I think there's that fear I think so people just tend not to record anything sometimes.

Paula Brady (10:00)
Absolutely, I think it's to do with the negative thought on them. People feel like they're telling on themselves, you know, why would I report this? I'm telling the mistake that I made or I'm telling, and you know, at the end of the day, the root cause might be nothing to do with that person. It could be a down to training, equipment, apps. It could be something that systematically needs improved. And so that mistake will not happen again right across the board. And if they don't share it.

Michael Venner (10:05)
Mm.

Paula Brady (10:26)
There's no learning. There's no organizational or company learning. So and it can sometimes and it's worth saying that too. It's just a one off. It's a one off issue that'll never repeat. And people would tell me that quite a bit. it just happened. You're like, grand just then log it and you'll see, you know, if it doesn't happen ever again. Yeah. But then if it happens five times in a year and as most businesses are really busy and they're just worried about getting their product or service out the door.

Michael Venner (10:44)
If it is a one-off, yeah.

Paula Brady (10:55)
they don't necessarily track everything or they can't keep it all in their heads. So it's a really easy point in time to sit and review them on a periodic basis and say, actually, there's a trend with that supplier or there's a trend with something that's happening on the factory floor. Or when we go out to see clients, this is a current theme that's cropping up. We didn't realize. So now we know it's an issue and that's when we'll apply the bigger fix. That's when we'll do our investigation that'll prompt a long-term

corrective action to use the terminology but all that means is you know you make sure it doesn't happen again old standards talk preventative action yeah

Michael Venner (11:27)
Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I had the conversation last week with a... who was it? I was having a conversation with someone who's going over that exact thing, the old standard of preventive action, which is really old terminology, isn't it? It's not used anyway.

Paula Brady (11:48)
Yeah, it's not used, some people who have had the standards maybe quite a while relate better to it. And as I always said, they've kind of pushed preventative action back to where it should have been into your risk. Risks and opportunities, that's it comes close six in the standards because that's where you should be kind of identifying things before they happen. That's true preventive action. Whereas a lot of people mistook long-term corrective action for preventative action.

Michael Venner (11:55)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (12:18)
But no, preventive should be prevented happening in the first place. Long term corrective prevented recurring or the recurrence of the same issue time and time again. So, you know, it's.

Michael Venner (12:26)
Yeah. So how many, how many organisations do you go to where three or four years into it, let's have a look at your non-conformances we haven't had any and there's zero for four or five years and you're like, yeah, everyone has issues. We have them, we log them, we deal with them. It's nothing, like you say, it's nothing to be ashamed of or it's part of business, isn't it? Really? Yeah. No one's perfect. No one's perfect.

Paula Brady (12:44)
you're going

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So many are there like, no, we haven't had any in our internal audit. And you're like, yeah,

I usually get quite a bit out of initial conversations in the opening meeting and leadership interviews because you talk about what's happened in the last 12 months and where issues have cropped up and things have had to deal with. And it'll always inform my conversation around no conformances later in the audit because they've told me they've had issues. But as you said, they're like, we've nothing, nothing on our no conformance log. You're going,

But sure, we talked about this supplier or that, you know, work and they were like, but that's not. But it is. It's something you've had to put resource and time and effort into trying to rectify. And that's the very nature of it. It's like, I don't know about you, the bugbear I have with sort of key performance indicators on health and safety being zero accidents or zero reportable accidents. And you know from conversations.

that just prevents people wanting to report them because they do not want to be the one that breaks this 325 days or 364 days of no accident reports. So, you know, what are you going to do as an employee? You're just going to go no way. I'm not reporting that because I'm not going to be the one that gets blamed. So.

Michael Venner (14:16)
That's a good point actually. Never thought of it that way actually. It's quite right though. People get fear of reporting something through fear of repercussions don't they sometimes.

Paula Brady (14:23)
Yeah, we're.

Yeah, being the one blamed for breaking the great record and you're going, no, that's preventing you improving. It's preventing you kind of looking at why it happened in the first place and doing something.

Michael Venner (14:39)
Yeah, okay. So we're saying it's important that people do record it then just purely to learn and develop and improve and I suppose not kid yourself for one. It highlights the key issues within the organisation that you can work on that are causing problems, pinch points. Isn't it really?

Paula Brady (15:00)
Yeah, absolutely. And it can be about your process map of how you go from A to Z that companies if you're not reporting that there's holdups.

in those gateways and those steps, how are you ever going to fix them and make your process as efficient as it possibly could be? You know, it's about avoiding the headaches of the people who are having to deal with those issues as it goes from A to Z And really, it can be systematic in the steps of the process. could be the process needs changed. You know, those are the the non-conformances that

Michael Venner (15:25)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (15:34)
you really get the grips with as an organization where actually how you said you wanted to do it isn't the best way. And it's the people doing it day in, day out, having to deal with the issues who are the real crux of getting that information out there and getting it registered and then alerting management to that kind of consideration so that it can go up the scale and get something done about it. You know, it's kind of like that. Whenever you say it out loud, it sounds like common sense.

But in the midst of delivering your service, your product, or just getting things done, it's hard to see the wood for the trees. You kind of really need that step back. And as you said, if you don't log it, even the smallest thing, but the smallest thing happening 50 times a year is costing you time and money. But you don't know you have it 50 times a year unless you log it. So there's a purpose.

Michael Venner (16:21)
Hmm.

Exactly, how can organizations kind of try and, I guess it's a bit of a culture thing, it? They need to try and improve the culture to make it show that hey this is a good thing to record. Is that what organizations need to do?

Paula Brady (16:44)
Yeah, I think it comes right back to that initial step that when you're putting a standard in or a management system in to meet the requirements of the standard, awareness and what's my role in this?

So that training that you roll out with your team and with everybody, they understand that everybody's involved in this management system, not just the one SHEQ manager or your health and safety officer or the one director who's kind of taken on responsibility for it. Everyone has a role to play and one of the main roles is that feed in for issues that occur in the business on a day to day basis. I think that's step one.

get everybody involved and realize it's their system, not just something that runs parallel to them or up in a corner somewhere that has no impact on them. So they're responsible, everyone's responsible for identifying what those issues are. So that takes a little bit of training and awareness. It takes a little bit of training on what a non-conformance is, how to recognize it and what needs reported and then to whom or where you bring that information. Because I think ultimately

everybody in a company would love to see things fixed that they know aren't going the way they're supposed to go. it's kind of the formalization of that process gives empowerment to them to be able to say, actually, I got listened to. And they've done something about that, or at least they've come back to me and said, this is why we can't do it this way. But we're going to have a look at it in this.

way of going and this is what we're putting in place and I think it's a lot of communication within the company buy into the system but that comes from awareness and then that things are actually being done and they can see the outcome.

Michael Venner (18:31)
That's a good point because I've done an audit Maybe about 18 months ago, maybe two years now and I was out in the factory and All the job cards were like, they terrible. There was nothing matched what they were doing the instructions were Absolutely nothing even remotely the same so I speak to the operator and he says Yeah, well we We we have to fill in engineering change orders. Yeah

Paula Brady (18:33)
that make sense?

Michael Venner (19:01)
and these go up to engineering and then they change them. I said so why aren't you? said we gave up on them years ago because they'd never ever listened to us. So what's the point of raising them? We were just raising paperwork and nothing was ever happening. It's like you're identifying a problem. An operator's filling in the paperwork telling you the problem because they're the ones doing it. Simple thing, just change a work order for something.

And they were just not ever getting done. So everything was just chaotic. So new people coming into the business would like pick up a job card and go, hang on, that's not that, that's not that. And they couldn't even do the job. was incredible. was a big culture thing and took a while for them to kind of get into that and realize that actually these are good things that people are raising, you know, telling us what's what the issue is, you know, so we can do something about it and make everything, everyone's lives easier.

Paula Brady (19:50)
Yeah.

Michael Venner (19:55)
process more streamlined, save money, there's all kinds of things.

Paula Brady (19:58)
less issue on the other side reduction in customer complaints i had one company i was into a while ago and their full non-conformance log was customer complaint and i was like is there in-process inspections yeah yeah we do that but they just weren't raising any issues that way so i went but the whole point is that you want to make sure you get it

before it gets to the customer because to fix it while you're in possession and they were a manufacturer to fix it while you have possession of the part is a lot cheaper for you than when it goes out to the customer has to be brought back and either replaced or repaired and you're double working on it. Your reworks, you know, those are the kind of things that are really important. Now, the same company was interested in linking non-conformance reporting with employee performance.

Michael Venner (20:51)
That's Okay. Dangerous, okay.

Paula Brady (20:53)
Yeah. And I was like, to be fair, at that time I was working as consultant and I would just went no. I goes, if you do that, nobody's going to report anything because it's going to impact their bonus at the end of the year. If they tell on themselves and you're going to get no improvement and you're not going to fix anything because it'll all be brushed under the carpet and you'll still have to deal with the outcome and customer complaint and things not going out right. When you could have

made everybody's life easier. you know, you cannot link it to performance and bonuses. So you know, you have to make it a positive thing, not something that everybody shies away from.

Michael Venner (21:24)
No.

Yeah, management think everything's great because the complaints and non-conformance has gone down, but actually people just stop raising them.

Paula Brady (21:38)
But you can't stop raising the complaints that come in. Do you know that? That's kind of important thing that if your complaints are up here and your internal issues are down here, something's not right. It really should be this way around. You're capturing everything here and that what goes out is eight times out of ten, correct? Nine times out of ten.

Michael Venner (21:41)
Hmm.

Mm. Yeah.

Paula Brady (21:59)
And that all links into your key performance measures and the rollback through action on that. But if you're not meeting your targets, there's something not going right, which usually will come back to your non-conformance log or the rationale behind why complaints are occurring. you know, it's the beauty of these standards. Everything is the plan, do, check, act is inherent in everything. And you should be raising

in NCs and planning and doing, checking and acting all should be linked into that non-conformance process which is hard to get your head around because you always think it's as you do something it's when it can go wrong but it could be an issue in the planning side of things that means it doesn't go right in the actuality of delivery of service or product so you know it all sounds very up in the air and we use all these big terms

Michael Venner (22:45)
Yeah, I think internal audits is a big one. Internal audits is a big one as well. think that people don't raise anything in the internal audits. no, can't put our hands up to anything. And then we go along and find things. Why is this not raised? Things like that. Some people like shows poor internal audits, but others have said, no, I knew about that. I said, well, why didn't you raise it?

Paula Brady (23:05)
Yeah, that and your.

Michael Venner (23:12)
well, I didn't want to make anyone look bad. We're not looking at people, you know, it's the process. It's better you find it than we do. Yeah, negative connotations.

Paula Brady (23:18)
But that comes back to the negative. I've had companies who go on and go, it's great. We had nothing raised in our external audit and zero issues and all. Great. But did you really have a good audit? You know, did they delve into and bring you any value? you know, not that anybody likes raising issues.

Michael Venner (23:34)
Mm.

Paula Brady (23:42)
If there are issues there, better to raise them and do something about them and improve and that bring value to your companies, both in internal audit and external audit. You know, we're not fault finders, we're compliance seekers. However, if there's no compliance there or there's issues with the compliance, it can only be in the benefit of the company to let them know about it and kind of make sure they do an action to prevent it recurring because

Especially for health and safety and environmental, much better your audit team, either internal or external, see something that an issue occurs and there's a claim or an accident occurs and somebody gets seriously injured or there's a death on your hands. Is it not much better that we kind of have seen what it is and said you need to do something about that?

Michael Venner (24:28)
Hmm.

Yeah and obviously non-conformance is in all the standards isn't it? It's not just 9001, 14001 45001 in the aerospace standards in all of them really isn't it? Something doesn't comply put it right.

Paula Brady (24:37)
That's getting.

Absolutely. you know, I suppose that the most straightforward non-conformance is an accident or an incident. You know, it's the one that people kind of...

have a much better understanding of because it's so much in the public domain, you know, industrial accidents or incidents and the legislative and the litigation that goes with those with claims. So it's the one I would use. I would use health and safety examples quite a bit to say this is a non-conformance. This is something where it hasn't went as planned or according to your own controls. So.

That's what you have to have a look at and relate your quality ones to it, relate your environmental incidents to it. You know, I've had companies try to hide oil spillages from me. We've all had that where you're walking around going, I definitely smell some kind of chemical here. Are you sure you haven't spilled something? No, definitely, definitely not. You go.

Michael Venner (25:47)
think people think we're fools sometimes. But they're only kidding themselves at the end of the day.

Paula Brady (25:50)
Absolutely. They're like, know I had a great one where there was company and they had been burning on site and a smoldering mass was to the left hand side. think you maybe even know that one too, Mike You were going, were you burning in your yard? No, no. I can literally see the smoke rising. It's just to be aware of it that, you know, you might be impeaching some legislative legislations and compliance here.

Michael Venner (26:05)
you

Yeah.

Yeah, I've seen it.

Paula Brady (26:16)
But it's internal audit. Yeah, it's internal audit and compliance legislation checks when you're talking on the health and safety and environmental side as well. You know, if you do a really thorough check on your own records, inspections, tests, processes, when you're checking if they're compliant to legislation, raise it, raise your non-compliances.

as non-conformances and put an action in. When you have piece of equipment that has defects category A and B defects are one and two however it's set out. know those are non-conformances you want to make sure there's an action happening. Use the process you have in place. Use your non-conformance log to make sure that they're being actioned and addressed and you have records of that. You know as you say when you go into company and you see defects on their equipment but nothing on their non-conformance log.

Michael Venner (27:01)
Mm. Yeah.

Paula Brady (27:09)
or they've had three accidents and no... now they might keep an accident log and a Non-conformance log but it's on neither and you go well that's the purpose of these bits of paper that you have in your system or electronic systems to really use them.

Michael Venner (27:20)
Yeah.

Well, had one just literally about two weeks ago. The internal audit in 2023 raised findings, didn't do anything about it. So the consultant gave them a report with the findings on, client didn't do anything. They come around to the 2024 internal audits, nothing's been done. So they raised the same findings, still didn't do anything with them. And I've gone in and just raised majors because...

You basically ignore two lots of internal audits where they've told you what's wrong. I've found exactly the same thing. You know, your non-conformance system isn't working really. It's good that they found them, but it's worse. Don't do anything about it. You know, that's the worst thing you can do. Raise things, document it, take actions. We like to see that stuff, but yeah, don't ignore them. You got part A right, you just didn't do part B.

Paula Brady (28:17)
Yeah.

That's yeah, that's that is a sort of a recurrent theme with some that audits have been done as well, where they've got all these inspection reports and, you know, listing all their recommendations or improvements or things that really need actioned. And the company stops at getting the report, especially if they've used an external contractor to kind of come in to do it. they kind of get the report.

They don't really read it. They file it away and say, tick. You know, we've got our racking inspected. We've got our fire risk assessment done. We have got a calibration certificate there. Now, the calibration certificate might say failed on it, but nobody has kind of taken the time to read it and see that it's correct and that everything is as it should be. The equipment one is.

the one that you would absolutely see where you see defects raised and nobody's really aware of them because they've got their annual inspection done. And that's kind of where they see the processes end. And when really the whole point of the inspection is to show up that everything's okay or not okay. And if it's not okay, you take action, you know.

Michael Venner (29:35)
So I don't know about you, but when those things come up, calibration or maintenance, I expect some kind of review. Someone's signed in it to say they've checked it or something just to acknowledge it was there and take the action.

Paula Brady (29:54)
Absolutely. Any kind of evidence to say that yep we are aware of the defects and here's the invoice for the repairs and you know we see that or there's a date on it off review and say see invoice number xyz that shows that we have done something about this but as I always say if you have a process in place anyway that deals with issues why not use that to make sure that that's sort of formally recorded

you'll know if a piece of plant is having a recurrent issue you know every six months or every 12 months and that it might be down to the use of it or it's not the appropriate size or it'll allow you to look deeper into why those defects are occurring and should lead to cost deficiencies you know or the time to retire that piece of kit because it's actually costing you more to maintain it than it is to buy a new piece you know and retire that one out so it's kind of

Michael Venner (30:51)
I think at the end of all this, you'll see the benefits, won't you really? By recording things, taking actions, two, three years down the line, you'll start seeing all the benefits really, because less issues are going to be raised, might save some money, made some efficiencies, like you say. There are benefits to it.

Paula Brady (31:12)
Absolutely. If any way is going to sort of save you money, it's identifying where it's costing you money. You know, for engineering is a big thing in Northern Ireland. We have a lot of engineering clients who manufacture big pieces of kit. And if you don't kind of look at your reworks, which ultimately are non-conformances.

then you kind of aren't looking at your efficiencies. If you're sort of just saying, that's part of our business, we are used to reworking X amount per year, go, but why? If you have trended this out and if you cost it, the really big thing whenever you are talking about manufacturing non-conformances, cost them, put a value to the time.

effort, parts, materials, capacity impact that you're going to have on your production. Put a value to that. And as soon as that adds up in a month or a quarter, you'll suddenly find management pricking their ears up and going, actually, this is costing us.

Michael Venner (32:15)
off the bottom line isn't it it's easy money really yeah

Paula Brady (32:19)
Yeah, easy money. And even yeah, the efficiencies of nesting and nesting well on your parts that you cut and using your off cuts and things like that. And there's great systems out there that do it. But if you're not kind of capturing the issues related to that again, as you say, easy money and looking at it and going.

Yeah, if we just claw back 10 % of this now, it's always gonna be based on the fact of how much you're putting through a factory or a production line value wise. Five grand is not gonna be anything to a million pounds a month, but five grand to 30 grand is gonna be quite a percentage, you know, so.

Michael Venner (32:57)
Well, was one myself and Martin done quite some years ago. It was in America actually. And it was quite a big company, the non-conformities, they were actually tracking the cost. And I think the cost was something like quarter of a million just for non-conformities. And then we said, isn't that a problem? The management team went, no, no, we turn over millions. I'm like, yeah, but that's quarter of a million.

off the bottom line. That's like pure money just gone. And they're like, yeah, I suppose we should probably do something about it. like, what? I'd love to be the size where we've got quarter of a million worth of problems, but it was incredible really. Which I think a lot of this does come, and I think that's the same with most of these standards and the requirements, comes from leadership, doesn't it? They have to enforce it. They have to want to do it.

Paula Brady (33:27)
Yeah.

Michael Venner (33:52)
have to drive that culture of no let's be proactive let's raise things let's document things you know let's look at them

Paula Brady (33:59)
Let's be interested in.

making things better and letting everybody know in the line that we're going to support them when they bring, we're not going to ignore them. We're going to support them and we're going to give them the resources to fix what needs fixed. That's going to be now. It's not every little thing that'll come up, but at least have the consideration of the issue as it comes and say, yeah, that's going to be worth fixing or no, that's going to cost us five times as much to fix the one. And you have to be practical in that too, in a business sense.

Michael Venner (34:06)
Mm.

Mm.

Paula Brady (34:31)
And I get that a lot from companies, you know, they're like, but in the scheme of things, that one's minimal. It's like one pound in a million. And it would cost us, you know, three hundred quid to fix, you know, that kind of idea that.

You have to understand that yes, they're not going to do absolutely everything, but they should be looking at what's critical and what's going to be the one that's going to save them thousands, which is why it's really important to start to cost it and look at, and not just material and time cost, getting the issue in, dealing with the customer or client.

all of that time and resource that goes into that then bringing it back in you know transport logistics to do that and time out of your overall production schedule because one thing companies always complain about is too little time to do too much if you can save yourself 10 % of your capacity it's huge it means you can produce 10 % more and earn money on that so you're losing double

Michael Venner (35:19)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah. So how can people find those big hitters? How can they tell how can organizations approach that to find out those ones that we want to do something about this? We're not going to do something about this. How can they go about that?

Paula Brady (35:44)
think it comes down to what we were talking about. It's logging things.

you know, keeping a register of everything that happens, looking for the trends, as you said, that kind of identify their big hitters. I've seen some companies do that brilliantly in the last kind of five to 10 years with software systems and management things. they talk about their top five, top five issues. So they'll pull the things that have been the most critical. And that's not just in monetary terms, though, that helps. It can be in safety terms. It can be in risk to their personnel that say, actually, this nearly

happened and we really need to do something about it to make sure that it doesn't happen in actuality. But yeah the the costing one is a big one to help you identify the big because it might be a one-off but it might cost you an absolute fortune or it could be hundreds or thousands of a lot of little things but all in the same vein. As you said the the engineering change orders or drawing packages or manufacturing packages not coming down

with enough information onto production floors and losing of parts, which is a massive one that they just disappear. And I've seen companies, you know, put up camera systems, put in barcode and things like that. And it really has minimized the issue coming out the other side. but they would never.

recognised how great an issue it was if they weren't logging it as they went through to realise it's worth investing this amount of money in this system because we're losing this on a quarterly basis and it more than pays for itself and I think that's kind of once you put a business case against a lot of the big hitters even in a health and safety perspective I had a company who weren't doing statutory inspections and everything and they were like

Michael Venner (37:11)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Paula Brady (37:34)
You know, Paula, that's going to cost me 60 grand. I went, how much do you think one accident is going to cost you? And they went, hmm, good point. Well taken. And honestly, that was as quick as our conversation was that as soon as they made the link in their head going, actually, hold on. In the terms of safety, it was. I might be in jail and all of it's for. So I think.

Michael Venner (37:53)
I may not even have a business at the end of it. Wearing an orange jumpsuit. I suppose they analyse it and they can analyse it how they want to. It could be by cost. could be, like you say, around, I guess if there's focusses on people, improving the environment around their people. They can analyse which ones are impacting that the greatest, can't they? It's up to them.

Paula Brady (38:19)
because ultimately that will impact productivity as well. You know, everything's linked. You have to think of it in that way. If you provide a safe, healthy, environmentally comfortable workplace, everybody's going to work that bit better. And so it'll add to your productivity. You'll be able to take on more work and you make more money as a business.

all of that, you know, if finance is what drives you. And I've come across it more and more lately that it's not just finance that drives people. It's a good workplace, you know, running a business that, you know, ESG is massive.

Michael Venner (38:56)
Yes.

Paula Brady (38:56)
at the minute and it's the big term. You go into any business and they talk about, you know, governance and social aspect and environment and all of that, you know, but I've found more companies putting money where their mouth is and the fact that they're actually investing in that now because they see the benefit out the other side. So, you know, if that's what you want to do, look at your issues and fix them. Simple, simple.

Michael Venner (39:15)
Hmm.

Yeah, it's quite simple really. Yeah, it's quite simple. But yeah, we do it ourselves. It's important to be aware of those issues, isn't it? And put things in place. Okay.

Paula Brady (39:26)
as they say

Yeah, absolutely. It can just be not realizing it is the issue that it is, you know, until somebody else points it out. And as you talked about an internal audit, it's why it's so critical for somebody impartial to the process that they're looking at. Does the audit because one, they'll ask all the questions they need to ask because they don't fully understand what it is you're doing. So they tend to be the people who will, why are you doing that? Is this not an issue or is that, you know?

And then it gives that kind of level of saying, well, this is something that you probably want to fix yourself because it'll make life easier. it's, you know, it's not just dumping. I think this is where the negative thing comes from with non-conformances. It was an old school thing that you just said, this is issue with you and write them all down and, know, you need to fix that. Whereas now it's a much more collaborative approach saying, well, I think this is an issue.

Do you think it's an issue? is this something you have to deal with a lot? And it's about getting the agreement and suddenly there's buy-in and a team willing to fix it rather than just saying that's your fault. You need to change. It's okay. You're dealing with this a lot. How can we make your life easier? And it's that impartiality in the auditor that'll do that for you. And the fact that

Michael Venner (40:37)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Paula Brady (40:53)
you know there's no blame game it's just tell me why it's done this way or tell me why you're continually having to fix this and it's like a lightbulb it's going hmm actually you're right

Michael Venner (41:01)
Yeah.

Have you seen any great successes then when people have really applied that kind of thinking that record everything, analyze, drill down, make improvements? Have you got any kind of success stories where you see someone really do that well?

Paula Brady (41:19)
There's a question I hadn't really thought about. I've seen, I have to say, thousands of examples when companies really get it. They get it. There was a manufacturing company I would have audited and they moved from like, I think it was something 30 grand per month of reworks and losses and issues down to five. You know, and it was just that light bulb moment. They hadn't tracked it. They hadn't costed it.

Michael Venner (41:39)
Yes.

Paula Brady (41:46)
And as soon as they'd done it and seen what they were losing, went, we need we really need to do something about this. And it was actually the fixes were quite simple, but just nobody had taken time to step back and realize the issue that it was. So they stepped back and put in sort of quite simple fixes and process and even restructuring and production lines and checks where there hadn't been checks before.

Michael Venner (41:54)
Mm.

Paula Brady (42:10)
So, you know, not even a full time job for anybody in particular, but just a process. And that's what they were able to save on a monthly basis. That was quite a big one. That kind of opened my eyes in my early days of auditing to what the benefit would actually be. What about you? You're bound to have seen some.

Michael Venner (42:28)
Yeah, I mean, I can't think of any off the of my head, but yeah, I've definitely seen it, definitely, especially in the aerospace scheme, because we're very critical of driving for those improvements and, you know, people analyzing things. We're very focused on analyzing the trends and focusing on it. like I say, you can see a lot of benefits, cost reductions, reworks again, like you say, is a big one.

that a lot of people don't record at all. They record scrap but they don't record rework. I'm like, that's just money you're just losing. It's... and they're like, it doesn't happen that often. I'm like, okay, yeah. What that you know of. How many times is someone going over to Barry, Barry this needs to be take a little bit more off of there and things like that. It's...

Paula Brady (43:06)
Just sending out the door.

Alright.

nip that or I've drilled this in the wrong place so you wouldn't do or folded it the wrong way or and that's very manufacturing but it's right across the board it's kind of definitely it's it's the easy fix but a lot of people don't see it as that because it's about I don't want to tell them myself it's getting right back to that and if you don't turn the story and I say I spend a lot of my initial audits with companies talking about this at length and with the companies who as you say after two or three years go

No, non-conformance log blank. You're going. And while you can't say unless you've come up with something in your audit, you can't say that can't be the case. You can't say, you know, maybe it's I always raise it as an opportunity for improvement. You know, do your training again. Roll it out.

Michael Venner (44:06)
people aware.

Paula Brady (44:08)
Roll the process out, they aware of how you're supposed to report them? Because you'll generally find chatting to people over the course of your audit, you'll hear the issues or you'll see it in meeting minutes or you'll see something recorded somewhere and you're going, really? That could have went on your log. And everybody could have been.

Michael Venner (44:18)
Mm.

Yeah, I've called. I have raised things before, like we don't do financial bits, we know that, but I've seen credit notes being issued and they're reporting on it. The management team's reported on it. have this many credit notes, things like that, but no complaints or returns. like, so what are the credit notes for? go, you're only kidding yourselves guys.

Paula Brady (44:35)
you

Michael Venner (44:49)
You're going to keep raising credit notes as much as you want, but they're not going to go down until you actually start addressing these issues.

Paula Brady (44:50)
it just

materials delivered and you're going, yeah, grand and but we, I goes, what happens if that's wrong? I always ask that question.

on all organizations, no matter sort of what the industry I go, okay, I'll play devil's advocate and go, okay, if this is wrong, or this guy doesn't do this, or what's your process? Because it's a really good sort of check to see that they're aware of what the process actually is, if there is an issue. And if they can't go, we'll call the supplier and get them to take it back and get new. And you go, is that it? And they're like, yep. And I come across that quite a bit. And you go, well,

Michael Venner (45:32)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (45:34)
That's a communication and awareness issue in the company really should go on your log too. To say they don't really know, they don't know that there's a process here that you can log this out and see if it's happening, you know, six times a month with this one supplier, especially a building contractors, a very good example of this because they may be run 10 sites.

and each site will operate in its own wee bubble to an extent. And if the learning doesn't come out of the site and to everyone, then it gets lost. And you'll find 10 sites dealing with the same issues, maybe with the same supplier. And, you know, and it's not about persecuting the supplier. It's about asking them, saying, look, I've noticed this.

Michael Venner (46:04)
Yes.

Mm.

Yeah, very good point.

Paula Brady (46:24)
let's work together to fix this. You can't go into a supplier's premises or a contractor's premises and go, I'm going to fix this for you. But you can sort of say, I have noticed this. Can we work on it? Because it may be something they don't realize. And suddenly, you know, you're pushing that non-conformance out to your whole supply chain and it's working to everybody's benefit.

Michael Venner (46:38)
Yeah.

So in aerospace we're very critical of supplier issues as well and you have to flow back to the supplier any issues like to get them to do the corrective actions but the amount of times that I'll see paper sitting in the sort of goods in area, I'm for a delivery note for that one, C of C for that, a material cert, that one forgot that, say okay then you can get recorded. No I'll just email them and then they fix it.

So how often does this happen? all the time. Is no one doing anything about that? So what some organisations then do is they log. They don't necessarily take full on corrective actions, but they'll log how many times the paperwork is missing. They start logging it and then they're putting that back into their system to then measure the supplier performance. So we're not only measuring on time delivery and quality, we're also measuring paperwork because it's important to us that

Paula Brady (47:42)
Yeah, the critical stuff.

Michael Venner (47:43)
paperwork not being there stops us starting work on it because we can't, we need to have that paperwork there to start it because it may be wrong. So then they start feeding that back to the supplier chain and saying this is how many times you haven't sent us the paperwork, you need to do something about this, this is really causing us problems and a lot of the time when you send something back to the suppliers documented they're like we didn't even know!

because someone in dispatch has been sending it but the management team weren't aware that paperwork wasn't getting through and they're like we need to really get onto this problem solved they'll fix it and then everyone's happy yeah yeah exactly they don't want you being upset as a supplier I don't want my customers being upset you know because you may end up going elsewhere at the end of the day yeah so tell me what the problems are

Paula Brady (48:23)
and everybody's life is easier. You know, it's amazing.

Does it?

Exactly. And if you get the supplier who doesn't care, then that's probably what you will do. But nine times out of ten, they're, as you say, it's of interest to them. Their whole thing is to keep their customer happy. But they'll not take you seriously unless you have your evidence to back it up. So your phone call, as you say,

all companies will do, they'll go straight onto the phone and be like, this was wrong. And they're like, yep, as a supplier, a good supplier will do, I'll fix your problem. I'll send you a new one. I'll do. But that's kind of until you kind of log it and are able to produce that back to them and they see it in black and white and go,

we have an issue that we need to look into and do a root cause on and then communicate with our customers to say, this is what we're doing to fix it. Can you help us check that it's working for you? It's about that mutually beneficial relationship. But again, unless you kind of realize the benefit in logging things and seeing where your issues are, you don't get it. And that, yeah, that's a common enough story. And it's one on audits that I would push quite hard on as well. You know.

Michael Venner (49:15)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (49:43)
you as you said that credit notes so that we don't look at the financial side of things are a really good indication that things aren't just going as they need to and the people on the ground who are bringing the stuff in they're like how's you know everything you get all the materials on they're like no this one was late by four weeks and it impacted my program to here and it done and suddenly you see the issues and you're going where does that go from here so a lot of the time it stays just with the people who are dealing with it

Michael Venner (50:11)
Yeah, yeah. Cool. Great. Yeah, we could bore people quite a bit. Yeah, know, suddenly in my head I thought, don't go to supplies because I'll be here all night.

Paula Brady (50:13)
So yeah, there's a lot, there's so much in this and it links to so many other things.

It goes right across the board, suppliers, subcontractors and that sounds like you're putting blame on it's not, it's just everybody's just trying to do what they do. You just need that process to check when things aren't going quite the way they need to. Once you do that, it should flow from there. But people are too used, I call it firefighting.

Michael Venner (50:39)
Definitely.

Paula Brady (50:46)
And, you know, every company I've ever went into are guilty of that, probably ourselves included. Just get the work done. Just get the work done. Fix whatever needs fixed and get on. And like we should know better. But it's about suddenly realizing, hold on, step back. It's what your meetings are for. don't get me started in meetings. It's like people have loads of meetings, but don't actually.

look at any issues that were identified in the meeting, they don't do an action register or they don't do minutes, you go, why do you have the meeting if you don't log what needs to be done coming out of it? And that's where you maybe find quite a lot of your non-conformances as well, the conversations that happen within meetings and people are having daily meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings. And if you're not logging the issues that you're discussing, then they're never going to get fixed.

Michael Venner (51:14)
Hmm.

Paula Brady (51:39)
So initially stick it in minutes or put it, do an action register coming out of all of your meetings and then what needs to go on to your NC log, pull it on there so you can do your longer term fix on it. So I don't know if you find that a bit. Sorry, now I'm blethering on a bit.

Michael Venner (51:52)
Yeah definitely, now we're kind of getting on so okay. Right, how can people get in touch with you? Paula if they would like to come and bother you.

Paula Brady (52:06)
Not a problem. I always welcome any input or conversations or even just queries. I always say that to anybody I speak to. very simple. You can get me at paula @ auva.com A-U-V-A, or I'm on LinkedIn or Facebook or on the business Facebook and Instagram. So you leave a wee message for me on there and one of the guys will pick it up and let me know. But yeah, the email is probably the easiest way.

Michael Venner (52:34)
Cool, brilliant. Yep, cool, brilliant. Okay, I appreciate your time. See, not too bad was it?

Paula Brady (52:34)
or a direct message on LinkedIn.

was pleasure actually, as it always is with this. Once you get into the chat, you could go on all night.

Michael Venner (52:49)
Yeah, we could talk for ages. yeah. Cool. OK, well, appreciate your time Paula and no doubt we'll do another one of these soon. OK, cheers. Bye.

Paula Brady (52:57)
Thanks Mike.


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