In the history of dumb auditor findings, this has to be the dumbest.

Over at the Oxebridge ISO 9001 LinkedIn Group, member Steve Hill revealed that one of his ISO 9001 consultants was hit with a whopper of a stupid nonconformity:

[Nonconformity] raised as the clients are excluding design and development as they do not design or develop products but they do design and develop the QMS and its processes.

Sweet Jesus, that’s a whole new level of stupid. If I put that in THE AUDITOR comic strip, you’d never believe it actually happened.

So, according to this window-licker auditor, nobody anywhere can ever exclude 8.3 because he says it’s relevant to the design of the QMS itself. In order to reach this conclusion, our intrepid, drooling pencil-eater has to undergo the following mental gymnastics:

First, he’s gotta just ignore the entire history of ISO 9001, going back to 1987. You see, ISO understood that you could exclude design even if you had a QMS, and they actually published two whole standards — ISO 9002 and ISO 9003 –allowing companies to do just that.

Next, he must entirely ignore the frigging title of the clause: 8.3 Design and Development of Products and Services. You see, it’s right there in the name: this isn’t about designing your QMS, it’s about designing the stuff you sell. And nobody sells their own QMS as a product or service.

Next (oh, there’s more), this shidiot then has to realize that if ISO meant for the design of the QMS itself to be a thing, it would have included it in the QMS “Planning” clauses (per PDCA) of 4 through 7. In fact, it would likely literally go into Clause 6.0 Planning. Clause 8 — which is where 8.3 resides, something this moron didn’t realize — is about “Operation” and is the “Do” part of PDCA. By the time you get to clause 8, ISO assumes the QMS is already designed, and now you’re actually using it. (Clauses 9 and 10 are then “Check” and “Act”, respectively.)

Steve rightfully questions whether “the CB read his report before sending it as surely they would’ve corrected it.” The short answer is, of course not. The CBs have one job, and they can’t be bothered to actually do it. So they let auditors like this neolithic numbnut run around wild, without anyone checking their work.

And, oh my God, am I hoping this auditor is reading this right now. Because, yeah, this is about you. You’re so stupid, you’re a danger to yourself and others. Here’s my advice, Mr. Auditor: find another line of work more suited to your skillset. Maybe spinning signs outside Liberty Insurance or cleaning shoes at a bowling alley. But you need to quit auditing entirely, and right now, because at this rate you are going to kill yourself the next time you try to put on a pair of safety glasses. I also suggest you lock yourself in a room and chain yourself to the bedpost like Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolfman, because — yeah — you can’t fix stupid, but you can sure help protect the rest of us from it.

Great auditor training, Exemplar and IRCA! I guess the check cleared, so you just printed this guy his Lead Auditor cert. I’m frankly surprised he didn’t papercut his eyelids with it.