This article aims at explaining the keys to making a business’s quality management system (QMS) strong and successful. It expounds the points that an organisation should be following while implementing.
It has become imperative for businesses to focus on ‘quality’ above all to survive in the competitive business climate. A purposefully developed quality management system (QMS) will help them stay quality-focused and continuously improve their product or service to satisfy customers and win a loyal customer base. However, implementing a QMS perfectly can be challenging for a business. In fact, getting a successful QMS means making its structure compliant with the top international quality certification i.e. ISO 9001. For that, you need a plan of actions or some guidelines from quality assurance experts to follow. It will ensure that you are headed in the right direction.
Here are some keys to finding success in implementing your QMS. Most importantly, along with all these, efforts from every employee of your organisation, starting with managers or leaders are required for success. Only after ensuring leadership of your management and participation of employees, can you follow these guidelines keenly to implement an effective QMS.
Analyse Your Quality Goals
The first step is of course identifying the quality goals or targets that your business aspires to achieve in its products or services. All your quality goals will also act as foundation of the QMS. To determine goals, you need to break down your customer behaviour analysis. First, understand their general expectations about your products or services from their buying and consumption pattern. Then, discover any complaints or grievances shown by them in your products or services. Lastly, conduct surveys to know what new attributes your target customers would like to have and try introducing them. Such an analysis will help to map out the key requirements of your products/services and make sure your QMS focused on achieving them.
Conduct a Gap Analysis
There is surely an existing system in your organisation for quality control even it is ambiguously followed. Conduct a thorough gap analysis of it to understand what shortfalls are in the current processes and what should be changed in them. Through a gap assessment, you can know exactly which new processes and improvements are required for quality control, so you can decide resources, plan teams and tasks to design the QMS.
Consider Documenting Your QMS
When you have clear insights about your quality objectives, you can determine a definite structure of your QMS. To support that structure and inform every employee, consider documenting it. Integration of quality in business management happens when a QMS is well-designed and established through formal documentation. It is only then the top management can instruct and urge members to follow the functions of QMS.
Deploy QMS according to the ISO Standard
Do not forget to follow all regulatory requirements of the ISO 9001 standard while deploying your QMS. It is the topmost standard that approves a company’s quality management framework and demonstrates its efficiency in improving quality of products or services. Review every aspect of your QMS including work procedures and quality assessment methods against ISO 9001 regulations. When your QMS fully complies with the standard, it will be deemed effective.
Develop Better Internal Communication
To enable your QMS to function properly after it is integrated, make sure that your organisation facilitates good channels for internal communication. Needless to say, every member and every process falls under the functional realm of QMS. Everything should be assessed to ensure that no flawed products or substandard services are being provided, starting from procurement of raw supplies to processing and distribution. This calls for consistent communication across every department and their respective staff. When anything wrong is reported in one process, others can be immediately informed, and the issue will be resolved. This way there is no way for any inconsistency to hamper the quality of final products or services when all internal processes work in well coordination.
Performance Evaluation
Lastly, make sure that your QMS is working perfectly resulting in improved performance or quality indicators. This is possible when your staff evaluates the QMS periodically. They need to carry out audits of it to find out whether it is improving certain parameters of quality. Audits will also help to identify any potential problems or noncompliance in QMS against the latest ISO 9001 standard.
While many apprehend that implementing a QMS will cost a lot but will fail to be effective in enhancing their quality focus, implementing it correctly will never let you down. Besides, a quality management system will integrate into the core of business management and apply to all operations. Thus, there are a lot of aspects to consider in its structure and implementation. While leaving out any aspects will cause ineffectiveness in the functioning of QMS, we have tried to put some valid points here that will help you get your QMS implemented successfully.
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