Passed!
Passed!
Yay, my company passed certification. He distinguished us as a "notable" site and recommended immediate certification for all 3 major agencies. Was a stressful day, but at least its all over now. Some quick tips for companies that might be doing this still:
1) Have all your ducks in a row. I presented all my companies documentation in regards to how our system would work right after the opening meeting. This helps for the auditor to get a feel for how the company works and the understanding that we have a system in place to handle the said procedures.
2) Don't freak out. There was two things that really got me about the audit. First thing was that the guy was pretty relaxed about the whole thing and the second thing was that he was very flexible about how to handle certain situations. For example, we had a missing part in one section of our documentation, and he basically said just write it up quickly before the end of the audit and it won't be a big deal. So I had one of our technicians write up a report and the auditor accepted it. Staying calm and showing that the company can handle problems smoothly goes a long way.
3) Understand the concept of suggestions vs. non-compliance. Non-compliance basically means you failed. Something hugely wrong that just won't help you to get certified. An example would be documentation that has only FSC in mind and not SFI (Granted this example assumes you are getting tri-certified, but I know a lot of companies that only deal with FSC). There are many suggestions that can be easily fixed, but the non-compliance is a huge thing and should be dealt with ahead of time.
4) Last but not least, know what your talking about. For a good three hours in the audit it was just me explaining the company, explaining the workflow, explaining how information goes through the plant and so on. If you show that you are on top of things, that helps out a lot. I worked for 5 months to get this all setup and I created every policy, document, procedure and change within the company in order to make this work. Me being the point man in all of it was crucial to our success, because when I was explaining it I knew what I was talking about.
Thats all I got, we'll have "official" certification in 4-6 weeks as they get around to processing everything.
Hope this helps people.
-Matt
