IAF MD 5, clause 2.3.2:
The justification to determine the effective number of personnel shall be available to the client organization and to the Accreditation Body for review during their assessments and on request from the Accreditation Body.
The CB uses a calculation template with several formulas embedded. As an example, we recently faced a calculation where the number of personnel given by the certified client is 240. As the result of the calculations for the effective number of personnel the audit duration has been defined based on 98 persons and justified with a statement that 140 factory workers are doing repetitive processes.
Questions:
- Have you defined any limits for the reductions of the number of personnel (definition of effective number of personnel)?
- Is the reduction based on the effective number of personnel included in the maximum reduction of 30% (IAF MD5 clause 3.9)?
- Do you require the CBs to open all the embedded formulas in the calculations based on the referred clause 2.3.2 of MD5?
March 2019
1) IAF MD5:2015 clause 2.3 to calculate the effective number of personnel is very clear in indicating the different considerations that a CAB shall take into account to move forward in the MD calculation process.
This is also based on the Effective Number of Personnel definition (clause 1.9).
These considerations, included in sub-clauses (i.e. from 2.3.1 to 2.3.6), are not indicating any specific limits of the increases/reductions to be considered, but 2.3.2 is indicating that justifications are to be available to the client organizations and to the AB for review during assessments and on request.
2) If there is an increase or reduction of the effective number of personnel, its calculation output (a number of employees) is used to enter in the tables to determine the first number of MDs to be considered.
After this step is completed, the clause 8 is to be taken into account and these additional considerations are determining the second number of MDs (increased/reduced) to be considered. This calculation step is potentially impacting on clause 3.9 (i.e. in case of reduction factors with a max of 30% allowed).
3) As AB, in order to understand how a quote calculation tool or process has been designed and validated by the CAB, you could ask evidences about this and, eventually, asking what is inside of an embedded formula.