“HELP – I’ve been volunteered to facilitate our Company’s quality improvement project but where to start a quality control system?”
There are methodologies and combinations of disciplines that make sense and work for businesses that need to know where to start a quality control system.
Keep in mind that you need to acknowledge the value of personal input if you hope to achieve sustainable improvement and facilitate where to start a quality control system. System implementation and integration have a direct effect on improvement and the differences in agendas and objectives of employees and management are common deterrents to achieving a quality program that continuously improves. Unless everyone is singing from the same sheet of music, it will be difficult to attain process consistency and system improvement. Everyone must agree on what needs to be accomplished and where to start a quality control system.
Fostering and maintaining open communications is critical to establish a quality control system and to achieve continuous improvement of the management system. Employees must be aware they are responsible and accountable for various business processes and activities.
Learn about how to create a quality control plan.
Some simple rules of thumb about where to start a quality control system:
- Avoid duplication of system documentation and efforts;
- Have cohesive systems that are logical and easily comprehended by system Users;
- Make sure system differences are transparent or seamless to the User and are characterized by activity, progress and transition.
Fail – Maintain – Succeed – only a few will ever use the quality improvement initiative as anything more than another marketing tool. Don’t let your initiative gather dust because it is not communicated on an ongoing basis. In an orchestra, the musicians are not there to play solo, they are there to support each other! A system must have an aim and the development and statement of the aim allows the people within the system to understand what they are working toward and where to start a quality control system.
More of what goes on within an organization involves the complex social interaction of many people rather than simply the manipulation of physical assets. Organizations are seen as complex and adaptive social networks that operate technical systems and processes to meet Customer requirements. Personnel selection and development as well as organization design are important for helping a complex and adaptive system to continuously improve.
Ask yourself a couple of simple questions to reveal your culture: “Do your employees say they work for or with their managers?” “Are your suppliers called vendors or partners?”
It may be more important for you to determine what quality program you want to use rather than trying to determine what you need to use or where to start a quality control system. If the program doesn’t inspire you, how will it work for you over the next 10 years?
Tampering creates variation and changing quality approaches frequently causes an organization to lose momentum and fail or just maintain the status quo. People really dislike the “flavor of the month” approach and the “yo-yo” effect when management changes focus from one QMS standard to another. Such as upgrading from a generic quality plan to MIL-I-45208, then from MIL-I-45208 to ISO 9001, then from ISO 9001 to AS9100. People don’t mind doing what needs to be done – just do it from one perspective until done and use a Facilitator that can actually get to know where to start a quality control system.
The key to understanding the performance and health of an organization and its processes rests with the selection and use of metrics.
If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it!
A well designed set of metrics must provide perspectives about:
…Customers
The voice of the Customer is not the organization’s interpretation of what the Customer is saying. The Customer perspective is either satisfied or unsatisfied. The voice of the Customer is heard using surveys, focus groups and a wide variety of other listening posts.
…Employees
The voice of the employee is not the organization’s interpretation of what the employee is saying – it is heard using surveys, focus groups and a wide variety of other listening posts to really determine where to start a quality control system.
…Suppliers
This measurement is often overlooked or delegated to a spoke of the organization that is at a level much lower than senior management. In many organizations, the Supplier represents a significant dollar percentage of revenue.
…the Organization
These measurements focus on how efficiently and effectively an organization delivers its products or services. It is reasonable to predict that good metrics from on-time delivery and the quality of products and services correlate to a high level of Customer satisfaction. These metrics are visible to the Customer but just as important are the measures of productivity, inventory turnover and reduction as well as downtime and defects.
…Finances
Managing solely by the financial metric can easily break other metrics. Manage and improve processes associated with the Customer, Employees, Suppliers and the Organization and the financial metric will naturally improve.
What quality improvement tool will inspire you to take your Company to another level?
Do you need a tool that will help you PLAN what you want your Company to do to take it to the next level and establish a consensus about where to start a quality control system? Will the quality improvement tool you choose help you:
- Understand your business culture and the relationship you have with your Customers, Suppliers and Partners?
- Understand your competitive environment, key challenges and the system you use for performance improvement?
- Understand your ability to achieve a competitive market position, overall performance and future success?
- Understand where to start a quality control system to realize the most return on investment of time and resources.
Do you need a tool that will help you DO what you want your Company to do to take it to the next level and know where to start a quality control system? Will the quality improvement tool you choose help you:
- Understand what your Customers want so your products and services stay current?
- Build relationships with Customers, increase Customer loyalty and determine Customer satisfaction?
- Identify and manage significant processes that create Customer value and achieve business success and growth?
- Manage support processes?
- Work in a way that enables your Company and employees to achieve high performance?
- Build employee knowledge, skills and capabilities to effectively determine where to start a quality control system?
- Maintain a work environment and employee support culture that contribute to the well-being, satisfaction and motivation of all employees?
- Establish links between your plans and what you do so you can measure, analyze, align and improve your performance data and information at all levels and in all areas of your organization?
- Ensure the quality and availability of linked data and information so you can mine databases for timely reports?
Do you need a tool that will help you CHECK what you’ve done to take your Company to the next level and confirm where to start a quality control system? Will the quality improvement tool you choose help you:
- Chart your most significant Customer focused results (past, present, projected, showing trends…) including Customer satisfaction and Customer perceived value, segmented by appropriate Customer groups and markets and include appropriate comparative data and benchmarks?
- Chart your most significant product and service performance results (past, present, projected, showing trends…) segmented by product groups, Customer groups and markets with appropriate comparative data and benchmarks?
- Chart your most significant human resource results (past, present, projected, showing trends…) including work system performance and employee learning, development, well-being and satisfaction, segmented to address the appropriate diversity of your workforce and the different types and categories of employees with appropriate comparative data and benchmarks?
- Chart your most significant operational performance results (past, present, projected, showing trends…) that contribute to the achievement of Company effectiveness, segmented by appropriate product groups and markets with appropriate comparative data and benchmarks?
- Chart your most significant self-control and community responsibility results (past, present, projected, showing trends…) including evidence of fiscal accountability, ethical behavior, legal compliance and organizational citizenship, segmented by appropriate business units with appropriate comparative data and benchmarks?
Do you need a tool that will help you ACT to take your Company to the next level after planning, doing and checking? Will the quality improvement tool you choose help you:
- Control and guide your Company with leaders reviewing the performance you have charted and checked, and use the information to help the Facilitator focus attention on where to start a quality control system?
- Fulfill your Company’s responsibilities to the community, ensure ethical behavior and practice good citizenship?
- Convert strategic objectives based on using the results of your plan and using them in future action plans, linked to charted results that contain significant performance measures and indicators that help restart the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle to induce continuous improvement?
Will the quality improvement tools you choose help you implement Deming’s 14 Principles, which is the foundation for where to start a quality control system:
- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service with the aim of becoming competitive, staying in business and providing jobs.
- Adopt a philosophy that does not tolerate lack of quality, defects, antiquated training methods and inadequate / ineffective supervision.
- Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag, minimize total cost, move toward a single supplier for any one item based on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
- Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service to improve quality and productivity to constantly decrease costs.
- Institute training on the job.
- Institute leadership that aims to help people and machines do a better job.
- Drive out fear so everyone can work effectively for the Company.
- Break down barriers between departments.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets that ask the workforce for zero defects and new levels of productivity. (The bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system, which lies beyond the power of the workforce.)
- Eliminate quotas on the factory floor – substitute leadership.
- Remove barriers that rob hourly workers, engineers and people in management of their right to pride of workmanship – abolish annual merit ratings and management by objectives – change the responsibility of supervisors from sheer numbers to quality.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement to get everyone on the same page about where to start a quality control system.
- Put everyone in the Company to work to accomplish the transformation.
Here are a few quality approaches that could inspire you to take your Company to another level and intelligently focus on where to start a quality control system:
ISO 9001
- Creates process stability and paves the way for Six Sigma and Lean Processes
- Calls for process improvement
- Applicable to any business
- Provides traction for translating improvements into strengths
- Reduces process variation, cycle time and waste
- Drives improvement
- Creates an agile learning organization
- Applicable to any business
Balanced Scorecard
- Focuses on measuring an organization from a holistic integrated perspective
- Metrics are balanced between measurement, analysis, knowledge, management and business results
- Management by fact
- Applicable to any business
- Organization is viewed as an integrated system of strategies and processes that encompass the concepts of the Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma/Lean and ISO 9001
- Provides an overall assessment of strengths and areas for improvement
- Serves as an umbrella for managing an organization
- Based upon cycles of process improvement
Quality Plan
- Not all businesses need a quality management system
- Sometimes, all a Customer wants is a simple quality plan
- Tailor a general purpose quality system plan to remove content that doesn’t apply to your business
The keep-it-simple approach is sometimes the best if your Company is not being pushed into a compliance corner. Click here to browse general purpose plans.
If your project is to immediately implement a quality program to qualify your organization for new business or to help your Company win a contract, your choice of quality programs is not what will inspire you but what will satisfy your urgency.
Urgency is common in many businesses and provides a good reason to learn where to start a quality control system. You may not be inspired by the program you choose, but you will provide a foundation for improvement.
Starting any quality control system enhances the understanding of your business culture and helps to reveal the influence it has on the activities of your business – knowledge is power and will definitely help answer the question, “Where to start a quality control system?”
Quality System Complexity:
The Customer is the reason most businesses use ISO 9001 to simplify where to start a quality control system. The exclusions your Company takes will depend on whether your business operates according to its own requirements or according to Customer specifications or strictly provides a service.
The overwhelming reason that businesses choose to register their QMS is to get a “pedigree number” for their quality control system to enable their Customers to check-the-box on their surveys and focus attention on price and delivery. No Customer wants to spend time in “discovery” about a Supplier’s quality system and “ISO 9001” spells the word “relief” for almost every Customer.
Learn more about how to begin a quality improvement project and advance your knowledge about where to start a quality control system.