Marie from Höganäs (GB) Ltd  attended Understanding IATF 16949 and IATF 16949 Internal Auditor training, this was delivered In-house. She found that having an external trainer come into the organisation provided additional support in relaying the message about the new IATF 16949 to Senior Management.

What were your training objectives?

As a small organisation, it’s important for us to be self-sufficient as well as to coach and support other auditors and staff within the business. We wanted to demonstrate the required competence under the standard, as well as train and develop our people.

What learning did you take from the course?

The role play/case studies were excellent and very helpful.  There were also a number of different diagramming methods that were useful, depending upon your learning and auditing style.

What have been the benefits for you and the business?

Having an external trainer come into the organisation has provided us with additional support in relaying the message about the new IATF 16949 to Senior Management. This has been a big benefit for buy-in and understanding of the new requirements of the standard and how we might implement them. We have now covered the additional and changed clauses in our QMS.

Another benefit is achieving confidence in auditing to the new requirements, through improved understanding and context.

How was the tutor?

Over the two training courses we had Phil and Mel as our tutors, both were very knowledgeable and experienced in their subject area. Both trainers were very receptive to questions and helped us clarify a number of specific issues we had over terminology and context.

The courses were well presented and structured with good slides and excellent course materials. Plenty of space was available for extra notes which proved very useful.

What were the benefits of having the training In-house at your organisation?

We had a few training delivery requirements and Bywater were able to accommodate our requests which was important for us as a small organisation. It also meant that we did not need to prepare and organise our own training sessions and material.

We had the opportunity to ask detailed questions that were specific to our organisation, which can be difficult in open courses; Mel in particular was extremely helpful with her knowledge and background and she was able to explain how we might interpret the requirements of the standard in the context of our particular operations.

Any advice to delegates?

Read up on both ISO9001:2015 and IATF16949:2016 standards and be aware of how they might affect your business; being able to quickly navigate around the standards is useful on the auditor course. We would also recommend completing the Understanding IATF 16949 course partly because it’s good grounding before for the Internal Auditor training, but it is also good as a stand-alone management briefing too.

Would you recommend Bywater?

Yes, very flexible in the times and dates of training delivery for a small organisation. We are looking to book more training later in the year.

Höganäs (GB) Ltd