What is the difference between a "major" and a "minor" nonconformance?

When an auditor from a registrar finds a discrepancy between the ISO standard and the company procedure or process, or between the company procedure and the actual implementation, they write their "finding" in the form of a nonconformance. Often, the auditor will make a distinction between a "major" and "minor" nonconformance - major being much more serious. A major nonconformance typically indicates that the management system has not been implemented properly. For example, if you tried to get certified without an internal audit program. A minor finding/nonconformance is usually indicative of an incident being discrepant instead of a system-wide problem. For example, if you had a problem with one internal audit file. If there are multiple instances of the same (or similar) minor nonconformance, the auditor may choose to tag the finding as major, since this indicates that the process itself has not been effectively implemented. With a major finding, certification will not be granted ...  more