We Share the Same Air But Not the Same Air Quality?

Air we breath in our atmosphere within our planet earth is not static. There is a complicated wind system influenced by various factors, like pressure that moves the air circulating within the globe. Hence, the dusts from a localized volcano eruption leads to massive disruption to international fights. Similarly, when an air pollution occurs in one country, eventually it will be distributed to neighboring countries.

 

Image of Dust Cloud Dispersion from the 2010 Iceland Volcano Eruption, Source: http://www.rainharvest.co.za

In some places it is an annual routines to generate dust particles from smokes by burning agricultural fields in early February to allow the fields to clear before plants and grasses begin to green in spring, e.g. Kansas, USA

Photo of Controlled Burning of Grass, Source: http://cjonline.com

   
 

 

In recent months, the well known German car manufacturer, i.e. Volkswagen has admitted that its vehicles were equipped with software that was used to cheat on emissions tests in USA. Now has to spend USD 7 billion to buy back its 500,000 diesel cars sold to American who filed the law suit because they were cheated on the car emission conformance to US standard, which obviously passed the German standard.

 

Unfortunately in some countries, aged school bus is licenced and obviously discharge black smoke willingly and the community accepts the scene without a serious fight, not like Americans.

 

Perhaps, people think that every country is breathing air from different source with different standard of air quality, similar to public tap water.

Images related to Volkswagen Emission Scandal, Source: http://www.nytimes.com

 

1st Party Audit Being Practiced Like 3rd Party Audit

 

In recent years of my 3rd party audit and assessment works, I'm seeing trend of internal audit aka 1st party audit is being conducted exactly like the 3rd party audit. Consequently, the internal audit fails to initiate timely correction of non-compliance on real-time basis and unable to prevent potential occurrence of non-compliance.

In fact, the organization accepts the idea that it is alright for management system's PDCA cycle is "broken" in-between its annual internal audit. Internal audit is one of the management system's quality assurance tool which is meant to ensure the organization continuously maintains its 365-day operation complying to its own policy, objectives and customers/ stakeholders expectation (stated/ implied/ obligatory). Conducting internal audit once a-year in several days does not reflect comprehension of continuous improvements of the operation that emphasizes prevention of failure thru timely corrections, corrective actions and preventive actions.  

The 3rd party audit by the certification/ accreditation body is meant to attest the organization has implemented/ maintains its implementation of the management system in accordance to requirements of the selected standards. It does not have adequate strength to replace the internal audit program performed by staff who knows in-depth the daily operational processes that transform the allocated inputs to the expected outputs, using available resources under real-time constraints within the inherent organizational behaviour.

Thus, the implementation of the internal audit program illustrates the sincerity by management to continuously improve their management system or just for the sake to fulfill the certification/accreditation body expectation, i.e. "Melepaskan batok di tangga". 

 

Note: About the photo, it shows the an old traditional practice of Malay culture to place an earthen jar in front of house next to staircase. A dipper made of coconut shell is known as "batok" in malay language. It is used to take water to wash feet before going into the house. Those days, people walk bare footed. There is an old Malay proverb "Melepaskan batok di tangga", translated in English "Leaving dipper on the staircase". It is a bad manner of a person when he does not place the place back the dipper on the cover of the jar, after washing his feet. The proverb is said when someone does something just for the sake of doing it without comprehension.