Whether you are providing a tangible product such as construction equipment, or a service such as building maintenance, your customers expect a level of quality from you. When you consistently provide quality products and services, you create customer loyalty, and open the doors to new markets by lowering the apprehension of trade partners.
Companies need management systems to ensure the uniformity and compatibility of products, services, and business systems. A Quality Management system ensures that your products or services meet the needs and expectations of your customers. The standards established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) make "state-of-the-art" management practices available for all organizations.
The ISO 9001:2000 standard can be applied equally well to small businesses and multinational corporations. The standard establishes the requirements an organization's quality management system must meet, rather than how the system should be implemented. This leaves room for each company to adapt the system to its corporate culture.
Advantages of an ISO quality management system (QMS)
Quality management systems ensures:
- A systematic approach to business management
- A set of standards that are recognized all over the world
- Verification of compliance to the standards by a third party
- An approach based on continuous improvement.
Benefits to service companies
When a customer can neither touch nor inspect a tangible product, the client-employee interface is essential. If a client is not satisfied, the company's reputation is at risk. It is extremely important to provide quality service.
The ISO 9001:2000 standard not only requires you to measure your ability to meet specified customer requirements such as the timeliness of delivery, or the quality of your product or service but requires you to determine the perception the customer has as to your ability to meet their requirements. This can be thought of in terms of customer satisfaction with their overall experience in dealing with you.
Fundamental Principles
The revised ISO 9001:2000 standard is based on eight fundamental principles. They can be summarized as follows:
- Customer Focus: Your clients' needs and expectations must be documented and their level of satisfaction measured.
- Leadership: The role of upper management is establishing unity of purpose, measurable goals and creating an environment that encourages employee involvement.
- Participation of people: Fully involving people at all levels of the organization enable their abilities to be used effectively.
- Process approach: Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes will ensure the desired result is achieved more efficiently.
- System approach to decision-making: Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes and the way these processes, as a system, contribute to the organization's effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives.
- Continual improvement: Establish methods for measuring the efficiency of your quality systems and for determining the required improvements. Continual improvement of the organization's overall performance should be a permanent objective.
- Factual approach to decision making: Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information.
- Mutually beneficial supplier relationships: An organization and its suppliers are interdependent –developing a mutually beneficial relationship will create value for both organizations.
Basic Requirements
ISO 9000 has five categories of requirements. Each of these five fundamental building blocks is required in order for the controlling process to occur:
1. Quality management system:
This section deals with the organization and integration of the processes of the Quality Management System (QMS).
- Identify the processes needed for the quality management system and their application throughout the organization.
- Determine the sequence and interaction.
- Determine the criteria and methods needed to ensure that both the operation and control of the processes are effective.
- Ensure the availability of resources and information necessary to support the operations and monitoring.
- Monitor, measure and analyse these processes.
- Implement actions necessary to achieve planned results and continual improvement.
2. Management responsibility
"Top management" is responsible for managing the system at a strategic level. Management must be able to demonstrate their commitment to the development, implementation and continual improvement of the QMS.
- Define and record a quality policy that is consistent with the strategy of the business.
- Define responsibilities and authority levels.
- Establish measurable goals for quality at all levels.
- Ensure that the policy and objectives are communicated and understood.
- Provide the resources needed to achieve these objectives.
- Commit to a process of continuous review and improvement.
3. Resource management
This section addresses the requirements for resources needed to implement and maintain the quality management system; continually improve its effectiveness and to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements. Included in this section are requirements for:
- The provisioning of Human Resources and training of personnel
- The provision of an appropriate infrastructure
- The provision of a work environment that supports the achievement of conformity in the products or services provided by the organization.
4. Product / service realization
The process of manufacturing the products or providing the services must be described in terms of planning, development, and validation. To do this, the organization must:
- Define the client's needs, both expressed and implicit, as well as the regulatory requirements for the product or service
- Determine the organization's capacity to satisfy these requirements
- Describe the product design i.e. planning, qualifications, personnel in charge
- Validate these points in practice (design reviews and inspections)
- Evaluate, select and monitor suppliers according to the criteria established to ensure the quality of the finished product or service
- Ensuring the product and its components are identified, handled, packaged, stored and protected from damage or deterioration
- Manage and describe production activities, from the signing of the contract to delivery
- Determine the information, documents, equipment, and materials needed for production
- Ensure measuring devices and equipment are accurate and maintained
- Ensure that customer property is identified, controlled and protected
5. Measurement, analysis, and improvement
The organization must plan and implement processes for monitoring, measuring, and improving to:
- Demonstrate conformity of the product,
- Ensure conformity of the quality management system, and
- Continually improve the effectiveness of the system.
To effectively manage the business, the organization should determine, collect and analyze appropriate data. At a minimum, the data collected and analyzed should provide information relating to such things as:
- Client satisfaction (e.g. via a customer satisfaction survey)
- Conformity of the product to requirements (e.g. defects, returns, warranty, etc.)
- Characteristics and trends of processes and products including opportunities for preventive action (e.g. timeliness of delivery, costs, etc.)
- Suppliers (issues and performance).
Implementing a QMS
Implementing a quality management system can be divided into three phases, each with several steps.
Phase 1: Planning
- Define the goals and objectives.
- Establish resources: Set up a planning committee and appoint a leader, hire an experienced consultant (if needed).
- Develop a work plan: Prepare a schedule of activities and determine the resources needed.
- Training: Set up basic training in the ISO standards for all the participants, and additional training for employees who will implement and/or audit the system.
Phase 2: Implementing the QMS
- Gather information to identify the processes within the organization.
- Prepare the necessary documentation which describes how the QMS process is applied, and the procedures defining how the policies will be achieved. Ensure records are available to support the activities identified in the procedures.
- Train the employees to use the procedures and improve on them in terms of consistency or documentation.
- Conduct audits to review the QMS manual by conducting internal audits.
- Conduct a review of the system to determine the effectiveness of the system implementation, internal auditors review the procedures described in the manual and adapt the documentation according to the approved procedures.
- Choosing a registrar to verify compliance of the quality system with the ISO 9001:2000 standard. *
* A list of accredited registration organizations is available at the Standards Council of Canada site.
Phase 3: Certification
- Pre-audit by the registrar (optional) prior to certification to enable business to make last-minute changes, facilitates certification, and give the registrar some prior knowledge of the company.
- Certification audit: The registrar verifies the implementation of the system based on ISO standard and company-specific requirements.
- Registration certificate: The organization receives the certificate, which is valid for three years and renewable annually following a partial audit by the registrar.
- Follow-up: The organization defines the steps needed to maintain certification, with a focus on continual improvement of the QMS and increased customer satisfaction.
Expert support
BDC Consulting has a national network of management consultants that can help you implement an ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS) by guiding your business through each stage in the certification process.
