JSM is led by Jeff Mullen, who holds:

• Probitas-accredited Lead Auditor certificate — ISO 9001:2015

• Probitas-accredited Lead Auditor certificate — AS9100D

• AIAG Lead Auditor certificate — IATF 16949:2016

• Microhardness Testing training — ASM International

• Design for Manufacturability training

• Multiple Root Cause and Corrective Action training courses

This is backed by nearly 20 years of manufacturing quality experience, including internal auditing, supplier quality, PPAP, KPI development, calibration systems, corrective action, root cause analysis, and QMS implementation across multiple industries.

JSM helps organizations prepare for certification, surveillance, recertification, customer audits, and internal audits by identifying gaps, strengthening documentation, improving corrective action systems, and helping your company meet the intent of the applicable standard before the registrar arrives.

Certification itself must be issued by an accredited third-party certification body, also known as a registrar.

Will the registrar still find something? Possibly — no audit is finding-free. But the goal is for your team to enter the audit with a stronger, more organized system, fewer surprises, and a clearer understanding of how your processes meet the standard.

ISO Readiness & Compliance Support is a structured review of your management system against your applicable standard — ISO 9001:2015, AS9100D, IATF 16949:2016, or ISO 14001:2015 — typically handled in two phases.

Phase 1: Readiness Assessment. A full system review, a clause-by-clause gap assessment, review of existing procedures and records, and identification of where the system meets requirements and where it needs work.

Phase 2: Implementation Support. Documentation updates, master document log creation or cleanup, process ownership clarification, corrective action planning, and preparation for internal or registrar audits.

A Corrective Action Review can also be added when open findings, RMAs, customer complaints, escapes, unresolved audit issues, or repeat nonconformities need to be reviewed for completeness and effectiveness.

It depends on how far along you are.

If your system is mostly in place and your audit is approaching, JSM can usually complete a readiness assessment in about 10 business days, depending on scope and records availability.

If you are starting from scratch or preparing for first-time certification, plan on 3 months or more depending on the size of the organization, number of processes involved, and how quickly action items get completed.

It depends on the standard, certification scheme, customer requirements, and certification body rules.

ISO 9001, AS9100, and ISO 14001: Usually, yes — if your certification body agrees in advance. This should be arranged when the audit is scheduled, not on audit day.

JSM will not lead the audit or answer on behalf of your process owners. Your team must demonstrate ownership of its processes, records, responsibilities, and results. When permitted, JSM can help locate objective evidence, clarify how the system was structured, and help your team review findings and next steps.

IATF 16949: No. IATF rules prohibit consultants from participating in the certification audit, directly or indirectly. For automotive clients, JSM's support happens before and after the audit — full preparation beforehand, and corrective action or follow-up support afterward.

ISO Readiness asks: Does the system meet the standard? Internal auditing asks: Are we doing what we say we do?

ISO Readiness compares your management system against a standard such as ISO 9001, AS9100, IATF 16949, or ISO 14001.

Internal auditing evaluates whether your organization is following its own procedures, work instructions, forms, records, and defined processes. The focus is your own system and process conformance — not a clause-by-clause readiness review.

Most companies request this after system upgrades, ERP transitions, leadership changes, process changes, or when procedures and work instructions have not been reviewed in years.

It depends on where you are.

No formal system. If corrective actions are happening but nothing is documented or tracked consistently, JSM works with your process owners to build a practical template and a dedicated location where corrective action records live.

Open, unverified corrective actions. For each one, we walk the process, build an effectiveness verification plan, and schedule follow-up reviews. Every meeting produces action items, due dates, responsible parties, and next steps so nothing falls through the cracks between meetings.

JSM also supports responses to customers, suppliers, or registrars when corrective action responses need to be clear, complete, and evidence-based.

Process Evaluation & Improvement means understanding how a process actually performs — and where risk, waste, rework, bottlenecks, or cost of poor quality exist.

Depending on the scope, this can include:

• Time studies to confirm quoting assumptions are accurate

• First Time Yield (FTY) tracking

• Scrap, rework, and nonconformance analysis

• Process bottleneck identification

• Compliance evaluations for suspect or high-risk products

• Production sequence reviews

• Inspection flow reviews

• Statistical Process Control implementation and process capability tracking

The goal is simple: decisions based on process evidence, not assumptions.

The scope varies for every organization. Examples include:

• Supplier portals. Offsite Supplier Quality Engineers can upload cert packages before overseas shipments, allowing your team to identify deviations before product ships instead of having receiving inspection rediscover an issue that was already dispositioned.

• Supplier performance tracking. Receiving inspection can record supplier data in a Microsoft List, giving you real-time supplier performance data that can export to Excel or Power BI. Scorecards, cert package review, and supplier corrective action follow-up fit here too.

• PPAP training and support. What a PPAP is, why it is used, how PPAP levels are selected, and how the documentation should be organized and reviewed.

A Manufacturing Operational Review and Risk Assessment looks at your business through quality, operations, and cost-of-poor-quality data.

For a business owner preparing to sell, this may include reviewing scrap, the last 12 months of returns or RMAs, nonconformances, corrective actions, supplier issues, and process performance to identify the products, processes, or suppliers creating the most cost and risk.

Using the 80/20 rule, JSM looks for repeat problems before a buyer, investor, or customer finds them. If one product line generates most of the scrap, returns, or repeat nonconformances, that becomes the focus — including whether past corrective actions ever addressed the issue.

From there, we implement improvement actions and schedule a 3-month follow-up to measure whether scrap, nonconformances, RMAs, and other cost-of-poor-quality indicators have improved.

The goal is to reduce cost of poor quality, improve operating performance, and strengthen the business before a sale, transition, customer audit, or operational review.

Do you offer this review for buyers too?

Yes.

For buyers, JSM follows a similar process but typically stops after the risk identification stage. The goal is to give you a clearer operational quality picture of the business you are considering.

This may include identifying recurring scrap, returns, weak corrective actions, unstable processes, supplier issues, and quality risks that may not show up clearly in the financial statements.

After the purchase is complete, you can choose to close the loop with an improvement phase.