Quality Management System: Start Out Keeping It Simple
Quality Management Systems do not focus on only the company’s products entirely. Each company’s marketplace factors determine how good the company’s products are. Quality Management Systems focus on customers and consistency in all processes affecting the quality of the product.
Quality Management Systems can be considered as the building blocks for creating a continuous improvement environment within your organization and one of the stepping-stones toward good customer satisfaction.
Quality Management Systems: Straight Forward Certification Expectations
There are a number of definitions of the word “Quality” as associated to Management Systems. Traditionally the definition is, “degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements”. To assess your organization’s readiness, then your organization should first consider the following questions,
- Could we do a better job in complying with requirements if the customer’s requirements are clearly stated at the time of an order?
- How well does your organization comply with specifications once we capture the customer’s requirements?
Customers may define for the organization what the product must do or the services they want and leave the organization to develop the necessary specification and design or method of providing the service requested.
So the next question that should be asked is, “Does our quality management system adequately support the organization with the ability to produce a product and/or service that consistently meets or exceeds the customer’s desired level of performance and fitness for their purpose”
If your answer to any of the aforementioned questions is that we are not as consistent and productive as we would like to be in our operations, and we could further improve our ability to meet our customer’s requirements or specifications than a quality management system is worth pursuing or improving upon.
Implementing a formal certification as the driving mechanism for organizational improvement in your company could be quite beneficial to your organization and customers.
Missing Customer Satisfaction Opportunities
When organizations break down root causes related to failing to provide customer satisfaction some of these factors are often found as the direct or indirect causes of failed customer satisfaction include:
- What needed to be done was not communicated to the persons doing the job throughout the organization…. Remedial communication did take place after the problem occurred.
- It was assumed the employee knew what was needed for the project, they have done the work before, but they didn’t do it this time correctly…. No time to resolve the unknown aspects of the project that turned out to be critical or important.
- Doing it correctly created perceived problems of expense and inconvenience… The expense and inconvenience are realized, as the organization must now redo the work again.
- Nobody had overall responsibility for verifying that the project was done right. No verification methods were planned initially but many personnel knew the project did contain special customer requirements…
A baseline expectation for your company’s quality management system and formal certification should be to deploy a system that can be consistently used to drive Prevention rather than Detection.
It is essential that all employees of a company recognize the overriding importance of achieving quality. Quality should not be allowed to suffer from the perceived competing interests of sales or production costs. Senior management determines cultural attitudes, if they take quality seriously, and let it be known that they take it seriously, everyone else within the organization will also take it seriously.
We can provide your senior management team with the knowledge and tools that leverage both management and employee involvement in your quality management system from the onset of your certification effort, or if your organization’s intent is to improve your existing quality management system. We can help your organization learn how to choose the right consultant for your quality management system certification.
Quality management system certification preparedness, training and implementation are the core of The ISO 9000 Group’s offerings. Our team has helped hundreds of organizations that want to harness the benefits of a quality management system, and we have the experience and knowledge to help you.
Our staff has a solid understanding of the ISO standards and concepts. We can help you understand ISO 9001:2015 and assess whether your organization is a strong candidate for certification. We have seen clients of all sizes make positive changes to their organizations and would be pleased to assist you.
Please complete our request for service questionnaire, and we can answer some of the following questions for you:
- What is QMS (Quality Management Systems) certification?
- How should I utilize a Registrar for Success?
- How much time does this take if our organization did the work ourselves?
- Why your customers may want your company to be certified?
- What are the benefits of being certified?
- What steps do you take to establish a QMS system?
- How long does a QMS turnkey project take from beginning to certification?
- What does an ISO consultancy and training organization actually do that makes the process quicker, less stressful and easy for us?
- What does QMS certification cost?
- What does our price quote contain in regard support?
- Other FAQ(s) Frequently Asked Questions that you might have.