Resources

In plain words

This is the most sober clause of the standard: provide enough of the right things so the work can succeed. It lists four kinds of resources. People (7.1.2): enough of them, with the needed skills. Infrastructure (7.1.3): buildings, machines, tools, IT — whatever is needed. Process environment (7.1.4): the conditions under which clean work is possible — temperature, cleanliness, light, noise, but also the social climate. And across all of it the question: what can we do ourselves, what do we buy in?

No document is prescribed. What is demanded is that you consciously determine and provide — and that an auditor on the tour can see: the people have what they need. Small companies meet most resource requirements long since; the clause merely turns quiet gut feeling into a conscious decision.

Calibration (7.1.5) and knowledge (7.1.6) formally belong to resources too, but are distinct enough for their own pages — here it is about people, machines and environment.

Why this requirement exists

Quality is a consequence of equipment. An overloaded team makes mistakes; a badly maintained machine produces scrap; a drafty, badly lit workbench produces inspection errors. The clause forces leadership to acknowledge the link between resources and results, instead of blaming quality problems solely on the people working under scarcity.

It is also the quiet connection to 5.1: if leadership takes accountability for the effectiveness of the QMS, that concretely means providing the means for it. A management review that sets objectives but allocates no resources is wishful thinking — 7.1 is where the thinking becomes honest.

What good looks like

In a company of 12 people this needs no document of its own — it needs the provision to visibly work. People: staffing matches the order book; bottlenecks (holidays, sickness, order peaks) are anticipated, not suffered. Infrastructure: a simple maintenance plan for the critical machines, working IT, decent tools. Environment: the shop is clean and orderly, the conditions fit the product (precision parts: temperature stability; food: hygiene).

Good means: these topics appear where they belong — as an investment out of an objective (6.2), as an action out of a risk (6.1), as a maintenance item in the production process (4.4). An auditor rarely checks 7.1 on paper and almost always on the tour.

What changes as you grow: From around 50 people, a real maintenance plan with history, capacity planning and defined environmental requirements for critical areas emerge. From 100–250 people, facility management, IT governance and systematic workforce planning join. The core remains: people have what they need — and where something is missing, it is a conscious, dated decision, not a permanent condition.

The minimum to pass

• Staffing that fits the work — no chronic understaffing that eats quality; bottlenecks are anticipated.
• Critical infrastructure is maintained — the machines and tools product quality depends on have maintenance (and evidence that it happens).
• The process environment fits the product — and is visibly in order on the tour.
• Make-or-buy is conscious — what is bought in is controlled (the bridge to 8.4).

What an auditor asks for

• The tour itself — order, machine condition, working conditions; this clause is mostly checked with the eyes.
• Maintenance evidence for the critical machines — the plan and the maintenance actually done.
• In conversation: “Do you have what you need to do good work? What’s missing?” — the honest answer from the workbench counts more than any document.
• Where special environmental requirements exist (cleanliness, climate): evidence that they are monitored.
• The connection: does a recent investment recognisably follow from an objective or a risk?

Common traps

• The invented document. An “infrastructure register” that exists only for the audit and is never used. The standard wants the resource, not the list.
• The forgotten maintenance. The critical machine runs until it fails — and the failure lands in the middle of a delivery date. A simple maintenance plan is cheaper than a standstill.
• Chronic understaffing as the normal state. “We’ll manage somehow” is not resource planning. If permanently too few people depress quality, that is a 7.1 finding — and a 5.1 one on top.
• Environment ignored. For precision, hygiene or electronics, the environment is product-critical — whoever disregards it produces unexplainable scrap.
• Wanting to do everything in-house. What the house cannot do well belongs bought in and controlled (8.4) — not done badly yourself.
• Resources without a link to objectives. Gut-feeling investments with no connection to risks or objectives are hard to justify — and in the audit a sign that 6.1/6.2 don’t really steer.

Worked example

Berger Präzisionsteile GmbH has no “resources document” — and still meets 7.1 visibly. People: the shift plan stands four weeks ahead (from the policy: “reliable planning”); for the foreseeable retirements (context 4.1) the onboarding programme is running. Infrastructure: Marco keeps a one-page maintenance plan for the four critical machines — interval, last service, next due; the 5-axis machine came as an investment straight out of an objective (6.2). Environment: production holds a stable temperature because precision dimensions demand it — no elaborate climate system, but a deliberately placed thermometer and the rule to let machines warm up in the morning.

On the audit tour, the auditor asked a machinist whether he had what he needed. Answer: “Tools are good, the machine runs — only for the second caliper we sometimes wait.” The auditor noted no finding — but Frau Berger did: a second caliper arrived within the week. Exactly this movement — the resource gap that surfaces in conversation and is quietly closed — is lived 7.1.

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