Who would not like to understand better productivity and less waste? Of course everybody does! Well, a perfect quality management system may be the right solution your company needs. But sadly the fact is quality management systems are very much complex, and most of the companies struggle a lot in implementing them.
A perfectly designed QMS can help improve your business activities in day to day operations. And in fact if it is brought in application the way it is required the results can be exclusive. Before we dive deeper into the quality management in your company, it is important you know its meaning and importance properly.
What Is Quality Management System and Why is it Important?
In simple terms, a quality management system is the collection of business functions and processes aiming the regular improvement of quality to guarantee customer expectations and meet their requirements.
In addition to this, quality management systems are also the ways by which companies can ensure the schedules, relationships, contracts and agreements are keeping pace with the food, environmental, and product safety standards. This is also determined as an outline of methods, techniques, organized structures, procedures, resources, processes and policies.
This is attained by creating an integrated system which is process centered and has complete involvement. This is also totally customer focused. Developing a culture which is customer focused and collecting and studying data which support the efforts for the customer are critical components to the entire system.
Importance of Quality Management System in Companies
And if we talk about its importance, QMS has occupied such an important place in the business world that every second company get it installed for better business operations. And the reasons behind giving it is not the profits directly rather it is the implementation and execution of the system in a planned way which ultimately brings the profits to picture. As a matter of fact, many leading organizations have used quality management system successfully to elevate their earnings most often through unconsidered and hidden advantages which may not be seen immediately when you think about the framework of a QMS.
Some of those benefits include:
• Better customer loyalty leading to repeat business
• Challenging targets and goals encouraging company expansion and growth
• Better effectiveness in the use of company resources
• Improved company and employee morale reducing the turnover rates
• Active participation and communication from employees
• Comprehensive tracking and monitoring systems that is able to detect flaws in production, core problems within the processes, customer satisfaction, respective goals and many other functions.
Coordinate company quality with strategic corporate goals
Both small and large companies employ management systems to improve the performance and increase customer satisfaction with the company’s services and products. An efficient quality management system needs to have some particular objectives related to the overall strategic goals of the company. When a small business defines such goals apparently, it can recognize the characteristics and tasks allowing it to achieve its respective targets. With a properly designed quality management system, a company can identify the problems and help in improving the quality to work better on the needs of its consumers. However any QMS system works well only if there company qualities coordinate well with the strategic corporate goals. Below is information on how this can work efficiently for any company.
Goal Characteristics
The objectives and goals a company defines under the quality management system have to be clear, measurable and achievable. An apparent goal is the one that address a particular aim from the company’s strategic plan. This may include details of what employees need to do to achieve that specific goal. A goal should basically have measurable characteristics referring how much progress is needed and when the company has fulfilled all its objectives.
Civilizing Quality
One of the main goals of any quality management system is to improve the quality of services and products that your company has to offer. Now quality in the system refers to three key components. With high quality we mean high compliance with applicable standards, higher accuracy and higher customer satisfaction. The main objective of the system is to achieve improvements and measure each component with standards together with functional testing. This shows if the products meet the consumer expectations.
Culture Influence
One of the key components of quality management systems is inspiring the culture of an organization. A quality company culture values the features of quality that the system strives and measures for regular improvement. This type of culture adjusts itself to the customers and fulfilling their requirements. When there are any issues with the quality, employees are ready to take responsibility for possible mistakes to not repeat them again in the future.
Which structures and resources are needed to reach quality goals?
Since quality is the topmost requirement of any organization, it is important to plan it in a way that is appealing and works best to make a difference. So, here is the structure and resources to reach quality goals.
Improving Management and Organizational Development
Assessment and Planning
Engage with the people who share your concern
• Identify the issue you are concerned about
• Ask for a meeting to get together and discuss the best ways to work as a team
• Recognize those organizations and persons who are concerned and know the reason too
Set up a Groping Task Force
Use the recent network to discover more people interested in some issue
Know the people you could represent different sectors of the community
Know your Territory and Know the Service Area
Outline the population and target area which may be either geographically or by sector
Define where those specific people are affected by the issue and where you need to target your efforts
Discover the Priority Requirements
Research past surveys and pay attention to the community of interest
Talk to some other organizations whether those are working with your target population or working on the same issues in other communities
Set Objectives, choose a Focus and Plan on Accomplishing them
Define what do you wish to accomplish as an organization
Write on the changes that need to take place in the community
Set clear objectives
Check out Strengths and Weaknesses of your Organization
Identify your organization’s strengths
Weaknesses of your organizations
Outside factors offering opportunities to develop your goals
Threats that may act as barriers to your success
Designing a Governing Structure
It offers its members clear guidelines on how to proceed
It develops a structure that binds the members together and facilitates their communications.
Review the Structure important for an organization to function
Some sort of governance
Open Distribution of work
Operating rules
Recognize the Role of Committees and ensure the Organization’s Success
Project Coordinator
Support committees
Task Force
Action committees
Other Supports
Define the Rules of Operation
Conflict in interest policies
Quality assurance policies
Disaster policies
Program policies
Media policies
Personnel policies
Conflict of interest policies
Outline the Task Responsibilities for Each Employee
Make out which positions will be a volunteer and which will be paid
Design a visual representation of the relationships between different roles in the organization
The process of sharing information
Rules for making policies and procedures
Who has the power to take decisions in particular circumstances
Review the goals and objectives of the organization and describe tasks it will have to do to reach them
What will be the skills required for that?
Is this something to start with a new activity?
Decide on the Qualifications and skill level of people who will be carrying on the tasks
Develop a proper job description
Which training or background does the person need to carry out the work?
Decide the tasks to be carried out by consultants, staff members and the volunteers
Design hiring and recruiting plan for volunteers and staff members
Decide who will supervise, orient and offer support to the volunteers and staff and what will be the way to accomplish it
Develop an evaluation system so as to have an approach to the performance of staff and volunteers
Offer career development opportunity to the staff and volunteers
Identify the accomplishments of volunteers and the staff
Plan the Finances systematically
What are the activities you need to reach your goals and what staff will be required to carry out those activities
Mention your mission. Objectives and goals and the method through which your organization has chosen to accomplish them
Define the role of the board, financial officer, program manager, and others in developing as well as using the budget
Look for the resources to hold up to your efforts
Mention how you mention your finances
With such clear and classified structures, it becomes easy for the employees, volunteers as well as the entrepreneurs to track the tasks while keeping a close check on growth through those particular activities.
Exclusive Creation and definition of guidelines, procedures, and tools
A quality management system is a system which is quite simple and pure. In fact, it is not a quality management system that makes the difference rather it is the management done in the right way which bears the fruits. This is a system that is built for ISO registration, to satisfy customer requirements, and to produce better products.
So here is the creation and definition of guidelines that help you make an efficient management system.
Define your Quality Policy
Quality policy refers to the mission of an organization because it simply relates to quality. It is, in fact, your quality mission. When you build up a management system for this specific purpose, it is important that you pen down the quality policy, and think about your commitments to focus the customers.
Three key points to take into consideration in this regard are:
What does your company need to do to satisfy your consumers?
What are your customer demands and requirements?
What better is required to do to satisfy your consumer more than now?
Map your Processes
The procedure of creating maps is what pushes you to define your sequence and processes and also the communication of those processes. Process maps are really important for understanding who is responsible and for what. These processes literally communicate the flow of your business.
Define your Flaws for Each Process
Flaws in the processes either come to picture because of product laws or it can be a process defect too. Every time you see some defect occurring, it needs to be corrected, counted and resolute if some action is required to make it correct.
Develop your Records and Documents
There are a lot of records and optional documents that may be used but they are not required at all. Start with ISO document set and add more to it as per requirement.
Define the Training Requirements
Everyone needs to display competence in their respective jobs. Training is just the beginning and may occur on the job, through some other means.
Monitor your Performance
If your business is using some quality management system, then you would definitely be collecting some data. But what is good about it if you collect data but do not understand it? Well, you need to define the performance benchmarks, track quality objective performance and discover the improvement opportunities.
With this, it is important for you to have some knowledge about effective tools that work best in managing the quality of the organization. And every tool may have some distinctive features. However, some of the most prominent management tools are Deviations, Nonconformance, and customer complains, etc. This integrates well with the rest of the system of the company as quality management can be really critical. This software does not just make the quality products, but also make the processes even more effective. This accelerates the time that it takes for the product to get to the market.
Manage the Participation of Divisional Managers and employees from Different Departments
Quality management is basically a continuous process and it needs to be upgraded regularly for improving the systems and processes to make sure superior quality products. Every organization’s first goal is to take care of its customers. And their feedback is really essential. Total Quality management creates the systems and processes on the basis of customer feedbacks and different researches which eventually help in the overall development of an organization.
A manager can act as a facilitator at the workplace. It is, however, your duty to help employees in implementing total quality management.
A manager should actually communicate the advantages of total quality management to all other members of the organization
Note it, that a manager is always a strong source of inspiration for other employees
Inspire your Employees
You need to find different ways to bring your teams together and make them work in coordination. Though individual employees have their own responsibilities, team members need to identify they are in this all together. You need to inform every department of their incentives, monthly goals and rewards to reach them.
Selection and definition of quality metrics for the entire company
The businesses that are growing quicker than their competitors and gaining market share during thwarting price wars, all those share a very common trait. They simply have an intensity about the product quality that echos through each work center, and across their production network. However, to keep your work on the right track, there is a need to keep the key metrics into consideration. And among those key metrics, one thing is common that is quality.
Corrective Action/Preventive Action (CAPA) events
Engineering Change Order (ECO) Tracking
Perfect Order Performance
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
Return Material Authorizations (RMAs) And Returns
Development of measures for systematic quality improvement
The vision of any quality management system should be optimizing the outcomes while improving and transforming the entire system. Such a system serves the entire public as one of the trusted partners with a quick focus on improving the beneficiary experience of population, outcomes and reducing the health care costs via improvement. Major areas to focus on when developing a systematic quality management system are:
Guiding the quality improvement across fostering learning networks, alignment as well as the development of new innovative measures.
Leading the quality measurement, implementation, and prioritization together with the development of new innovative measures.
Measures to promote a culture of quality in the company
The brands or the leading companies have always given undivided value to the quality. There are new technologies that have empowered customers to compare and seek out an endless collection of products from across the globe. The shoppers can simply click to seek objective data compiled by the experts at organizations. With this, we cannot deny this fact also that these customers have got the power to go online, read user-generated reviews. This is something that gives a very true insight to the customers to the product quality. The buyers are thus informed prior to the quality issues through these genuine reviews.
According to a recent survey, 26% of the users said that they used social media to check about the company and build trust in it. And this issue is certainly not limited to the customer space. 75% of the B2B customers say that they are dependent on the word of mouth which certainly includes social media when making any sort of purchase decisions. Seeing such a concern for quality and so much awareness for the products before making a purchase, it is a no brainer that there is a need to develop some measures to maintain the quality of the company.
What is it that embeds the quality of the company’s culture? And how exactly does an organization get benefit from it? These are some of the questions which are actually at the heart of the culture of quality.
There are basically four essential measures to promote a culture of Quality in the organization –
Assuring the message credibility
Managing the leadership emphasis on quality
Increasing employee empowerment and ownership
Encouraging peer involvement
These are the particular actions that are required to assist an organization makes a shift from a rules-based quality environment to a proper culture of quality. It may differ from company to company, but the first process will always remain the same no matter what. Managers should decide that a culture of quality is worth taking on. A culture of quality simply needs the employees to apply skills while making decisions in highly ambiguous but critical areas when leading them toward some deeper reflection about the payoffs and risks of their actions. In a business environment where consumer tolerance for quality problems is reducing, a workforce that holds the quality as the real value is the main competitive advantage.
The “Big Picture” –
OK, so you do not find them all very easy steps? Bu the concept itself is not at all complicated. Each step mentioned above is broken down into successively smaller pieces, but if you begin with the big picture and the keep it handy, you will definitely do fine. You just need to refer to it when you start building it. That is the main point where companies often go wrong. They pay attention to one part of the story like that was the entire story.
Final Remarks –
Since the quality system is so much important for the organizations to take them to another level, there is a lot to strategies it in the right way. Before installing any quality system, the most important thing is to make sure that you have strategized the quality system proficiently. Your employees need to understand the vision together with the role in supporting the system. You can look for simple ways to ensure that all the internal processes are standardized and that employees receive all the training to understand the standardization.
The successful quality initiatives are an ongoing process and may support through its structure, staff transitions, and process. There is a need for the designated resources to supporting these endeavors.
