Sasol Synfuels Environment, A Noncomformance Management

The process chosen for this assignment is from the Sasol Synfuels environment. It is the non-conformance management process that is applied whenever there is any non- conformance (NCM), which has an effect on production operations; equipment operations or safety. When any incident, deviation or non-conformance related to safety health and environment (SHE), production or maintenance occurs; this must be considered for investigation and reported immediately to the Area manager by following the process flow diagram as indicated on Figure 1.

Table1: Abbreviations used according to the Sasol Procedure by M. Pillay 2012: Non-conformance management

1.1.1 According to the Sasol document (Work instruction: Non-conformance management) the purpose of having a process to manage non-conformance could either be related to quality and risk management. Every process has agreed upon requirement that needs to be complied to.

• The objective of the process in terms of deliverable and time are as follows:-

- Create a culture for recognizing and informing management and analyses possible loses and deviations from the set requirements.

- Create a work environment where there is participation from all individuals in determining the solution to the problem at hand.

- To ensure that when non conformances arise, people know which route to take to report the incident in the required time.

- This process also makes it easier to determine the roles of different individuals in the process.

• The overall investigation timeline should not exceed 3 months (Including implementation and closing of the next steps), depending on the non-conformance impact and investigation type. Investigation lines are included on the table above (Table 2).

Fig. 1 The non-confo...

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...gement system.

Step 19 & 20-Feedback and audit

The feedback from the investigation should also be captured on SAP for history keeping. Overall audit is done by the appropriate auditing team to ensure that all required next steps were closed and that proof is available for all the closed next steps.

Figure 2: Inputs, Controls, Outputs & Mechanisms (ICOM) for Nonconformance management Process

Figure 2 represents the inputs, controls, output & mechanisms which are needed for the successful implementation of the non-conformance process and the inputs are very important for the investigation part of the non-conformance. Without the identified inputs, the investigation process might take longer than the investigation time line which will delay the whole process. It will also be difficult to get to the correct conclusion/recommendation if the inputs are not available.