Quality Management System free essay sample

These principles have been identified to facilitate the achievement of quality objectives and form the foundation for effective quality management. 1. Customer Focus Organisations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations. Satisfying customer needs and requirements should be the prime objective for any organisation because organisations will generate profits mainly through the sales of their goods and services to customers. Without customer satisfaction any business will ultimately fail. Any organisation also needs to have ways of keeping in touch with how customers perceive its performance, that is, how well they think the organisation has met their requirements. ISO 9001:2008 places much emphasis on customer focus. Organisations can obtain customer needs through surveys and the surveys are normally conducted by an ISO auditor. Conducting a survey is a form of documentation. In fact customer needs can be obtained in many forms. We will write a custom essay sample on Quality Management System or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Other than formal surveys, customer needs can also be obtained during customer visits, customers complaints and customer feedback. These data can be used as an input in the ISO system. By applying the principle of customer focus, managers will be able to research and understand customer needs and expectations. By encouraging open dialogue and feedback from their customers will allow them the opportunity to better understand their needs and how they may better serve them. This, in turn, allows these managers to set goals to improve customer satisfaction and retain customer loyalty. Some methods that allow businesses to better communicate with their customers include the use of suggestion boxes, comment cards and providing a telephone number for customers to call when they have questions or comments. Moreover, the managers must also ensure that the goals and targets of the organisation are perfectly aligned with the customer needs and expectations and that these needs and expectations are properly communicated to all employees throughout the organisation. The customer focus principle is also associated with some benefits that the organisation is likely to gain. Firstly, revenues and market shares obtained are likely to increase through flexible and fast responses to market opportunities, that is, when organisations focus more on satisfying customer needs, their sales are more likely to increase ultimately this also leads to an increase in market shares. They also have access to more market opportunities due to competition advantage that they will gain. Secondly, customer focus principle helps to improved customer loyalty which leads to repeat business and referrals on part of the customers. When customers are satisfied with a product or service that an organisation providing to them, they will be willing to come back to this organisation and continue to purchase with it. Thus they develop a brand loyalty for this organisation’s products and they will not want to switch to its competitor. Satisfied customers will also refer the organisation’s products to their friends and family which will increase the number of sales for this organisation and thus leads to more profits. 2. Leadership The strategy, direction and ultimate success of any business is largely dependent upon its leadership, along with the environment and even the culture that is encouraged throughout the organisation. Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organizations objectives. A good leadership is important to influence and motivate others to follow him/her into areas of uncertainty. What it means here is that the crucial leadership role is concerned with change. In times of uncertainty, change is the only constant to the organization’s survival and hence longevity. As changes bring anxiety to employees, a good leader must help the people to know the organization through its values, guiding principles and underlying philosophy in such times. Under the ISO 9001 requirements, the leadership role is defined as management responsibility in Clause 5, â€Å"Management Responsibility†. The standard requires that top management to provide evidence of its commitment to the development and implementation of the quality management system and continually improving its effectiveness. However, the implementation of a quality management system will hardly be successful if there is lack of commitment from top management. As such, it is critical that top management has a sound appreciation and understanding of all facets of quality management and, in particular, issues pertaining to quality assurance. This understanding and appreciation should be obtained through appropriate training and experience. It must also be remembered that leadership can be found at all levels within an organization and identifying this quality may be of great benefit in establishing a quality culture within a specific section of an organisation or throughout the organisation as a whole. By applying the principle of leadership, a leader will be able to establish a clear vision of the organisation’s future. A clearly communicated vision and purpose on the part of management is a key to ensuring business improvement. It is important to have a clear vision so that employees can work towards this vision in order to achieve the organisational objectives. Without a clear vision, employees will not know in what direction to work and what top management is expected from them. The role of a good leader is to guide its employees towards the achievement of organisational objectives. As a good leader, it is also important to set challenging goals and targets. A good leader must be passionate about the objective of the organization and to achieve the desired target. It is the responsibility of the top management to ensure customer requirements are determined and satisfied in order to achieve total customer satisfaction. All the resources of the organization are aligned towards this goal. Moreover, a good leader should be able to eliminate fear in his or her employees, that is, he or she should be constantly present for the employees, encourage them to share their ideas, give them the opportunity to voice out and to express themselves freely about any issues or problems. He must establish trust in the mind of his or her employees, that is, these employees must feel that they can trust their leader. Thus, people will understand and be motivated towards the achievement of organisation’s goals and objectives. They will be more motivated to perform in the interest of the organisation. 3. Involvement of People People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organizations benefit. Being a member of an organization provides the opportunity for an individual to contribute. However, the extent to which an organization achieves its desired objectives will depend on how it is able to organize and involve its people in the manner that will enable them to use their abilities and contribute to the organization’s objectives. The most effective way to achieve quality is by involving people across all levels of the organization. Everyone contributes to the success of an organisation and has a part to play in it, as well as a responsibility for quality. Staff must be suitably qualified and competent in their jobs, as the quality of their work directly affects the quality of service. This can be achieved through the provision of appropriate training and evaluation. Quality awareness training should also be provided to all relevant staff to heighten responsibility, accountability and quality consciousness, that is, to assist in building a quality-focused culture. With the implementation of the quality management system, staffs need to take on additional responsibilities such as the day to-day consistency checks as part of the data for product quality assurance and control processes. By applying the principle of involvement of people in an organisation, people will understand the importance of their contribution and role in the organisation. The top management’s role is to provide the environment where people are empowered to realize the organization’s objectives. Top management needs to establish the quality policy, ensure the quality objectives are established at relevant functions and levels in the organization, communicates to all employees on the importance of meeting customer as well as stator and regulatory requirements, conduct management reviews and ensure the availability of resources. Moreover, people will be able to openly discuss problems and issues among themselves and with their managers and also will freely share their knowledge and experience in the workplace which can be a plus in the achievement of organisational objectives and goals. One main benefit of this principle is that people will be more motivated, committed and involved within the organisation and this will lead to more innovation and creativity in the organisation. 4. Process Approach A desired result is achieved more efficiently when activities and related resources are managed as a process. Efficiency is better achieved when things are managed as processes, rather than as individual tasks or separate departments. A process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. A quality management system can be thought of as a single large process that uses many inputs to generate many outputs. In turn, this large process is made up of many smaller processes. A work process is a series of operations/steps or activities that transform input into intermediate output at each step until the final output that meets the customer specified requirements. A common term to remember the structure of a process is SIPOC – Suppliers, Input, Process, Output and Customers. The process approach using the SIPOC model creates processes that will produce products and services that conform to customer specified requirements. Understanding and improving process capability is superior to inspecting and sorting the final output. It is the responsibility of management to identify processes needed to produce and deliver the products or services to satisfy the requirements of the customer and other interested parties (suppliers, employees and other affected parties). However, in order to consistently meet customer requirements, a high degree of standardization must exist in the processes. To apply a process approach means that an organisation first decides what it plans to do ( e. g. , provide a particular service/create a particular widget), and then work out what processes it will need in order to provide that service/create that widget. For example, an organisation has to decide what the tasks are, how and where they relate, what resources and inputs it will need, and how to do things in order to arrive at the result this organisation wants. By applying the principle of process approach in the production process, structured methods will be used to undertake the activities necessary to obtain a desired result. Top management will focus more on the factors such as resources, methods and materials that will be used in the production process to improve the key activities of the organisation. Top management will have to do a proper planning so as to avoid wastage of resources and unnecessary costs spent on raw materials. The main benefit with process approach is that when top management uses resources effectively, this will lead to lower costs and shorter cycle times as there will be proper planning, that is, with planning top management will spend money only on the amount of raw materials that will be needed in the production process and there will be no need to reorder each time. 5. System Approach to Management Identifying, understanding and managing a system of interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organisations effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives. This means understanding what a management system is, its various parts and how you want it to work. It also means having consistent ways to do and manage things. Management should view all business activities and processes as parts of an integrated system. This will then encourage greater efficiency and effectiveness throughout the organisation. The system approach is a crucial concept for maintaining the integrity of the management system when improvement changes are made to quality management system, as it can provide the mental picture on the interactions of the parts in the system. By applying the principle of the system approach to management, top management will be able to understand the interdependencies among the processes of the system and also understand organisational capabilities. Moreover, top management will be able to identify the resource constraints. For e. g. departments where resources are limited, thus top management will be able to find solution to overcome this problem. One benefit is that top management has the ability to focus effort on the important processes. 6. Continual Improvement Continual improvement of the organizations overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization. This should be a permanent feature of any organisation that really wishes to excel within its marketplace. Whatever the organisation does to improve performance should be subject to a continuing cycle of review, and this may result in the further raising of targets and goals to new levels. This is necessary to keep ahead of the competition. Continual improvement drives the organization to continually address ways to reduce costs, improve organizational performance and customer satisfaction. Management reviews have to be conducted regularly using the data collected from the monitoring and measurement process to identify areas for further improvement. Channels may need to be established to allow all staffs in the organization to make suggestions on ways to improve the service. By applying the principle of continual improvement, top management needs to provide people with appropriate training in the methods and tools of continual improvement, that is, they must be trained on how to continually improve the quality of goods and services. Top management should provide these people with appropriate tools and methods that will be used in the improvement process. Top management should also recognise and acknowledge employees for their effort and work towards the improvement process. For this it shout use proper rewards system. One benefit is that an organisation is more flexible to react quickly to opportunities. 7. Factual Approach to Decision Making. Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information. All key strategic decisions should be based on sound data that has been gathered via predetermined measures. Management use these data and information to make decisions. This allows for objective decision making that will lead to positive actions. The basis for factual approach to decision making is the performance based management system. By applying the principle of factual approach to decision making, top management can ensure that data and information are sufficiently accurate and reliable. The data itself is made accessible to whoever needs it. Moreover, top management can also analyse the data and information by using valid methods. The benefits of this approach are that, firstly management has the ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of the past decisions through reference to formal histories and secondly, it also can review, challenge and change options and decisions. 8. Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationships An organization and its suppliers are interdependent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability of both to create value. Smaller firms traditionally supplied parts or materials to larger manufacturers to meet a specified order. An organisation and its suppliers depend on each other. More however can be derived from the supplier/customer relationship by seeing it instead as an interdependent partnership that provides mutual benefits to both sides. The suppliers should be evaluated and selected on the basis of their ability to meet purchase order requirements and on their past performance. By applying the principles of mutually beneficial supplier relationships, organisations can identify and select their key suppliers, that is, they will be able to find suppliers who supply best materials at a reasonable price. Moreover, Organisations and suppliers can also establish a clear and open communication path with each other while doing business together. The main benefits of this approach are that it can create value for both organisations and suppliers. They are more likely to response to any changes occurring in the market or customer needs and expectations.