Summary of Requirements

Section 6 of ISO/TS 16949 draws together all the resources-related requirements that were somewhat scattered in the 1999 version. Resource management is a key business process in all organizations. In practice, resource management is a collection of related processes that are often departmentally oriented:

• financial resources are controlled by the Finance Department;

• purchased materials, equipment and supplies are controlled by the Purchasing Department;

• measuring equipment maintenance is controlled by the Calibration Department;

• plant maintenance is controlled by the Maintenance Department;

• staff development is controlled by the Human Resources or Personnel Department;

• building maintenance is controlled by the Facilities Management Department.

These departments control the resources in as much that they might plan, acquire, maintain and dispose of them but do not manage them totally because they are not the sole users or customers of the resource. They therefore only perform a few of the tasks necessary to manage resources. Collectively they control the human, physical and financial resources of the organization.

The resource management process has a number of distinct stages as shown in Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1: Resource management process stages

Whatever the resource, firstly it has to be planned, then acquired, deployed, maintained and eventually disposed of. The detail of each process will differ depending on the type of resource being managed. Human resources are not disposed of but their employment or contract terminated although...