7 Easy Steps to a Quality Management System
| by Steve Flick | ||||
We had a customer ask us this week about obtaining “ASO certification”. Here, in a nutshell, is what we said in reply:
“We’re unfamiliar with ‘ASO’ certification (one of my cohorts “googled” the acronym and didn’t think any of the results fit, so we assumed they meant “ISO” – if we’re wrong, we’ll hear about it). However, if a company wants to obtain ‘ISO’ certification, it has to do the following:
- Develop a quality management system (QMS);
- Implement the QMS and collect data;
- Review the data collected and use it to drive improvement;
- After several cycles of the QMS, you should have an indication of whether it’s working. When you’re sure it is…
- Apply for a certification audit. Your country’s ISO member body should have information on certifying bodies, registrars, etc.;
- A few weeks after you’ve been through the audit, the certication auditor will tell you if you passed (or if you didn’t, where you were weak and need improvement). If you passed, ring the bell! Have a party! Tell all your friends (Facebook and real), family, and business associates! Your Quality Management System is now ISO certified! And…
- In the event you didn’t pass, make the necessary changes (at the bare minimum) and reapply for a certification audit.
One thing we didn’t tell the customer initially is, “Don’t have unrealistic expectations.” Developing and utilizing the QMS — as well as the subsequent audit — are going to take time and effort.
If you’re doing it purely for marketing’s sake, if you think you can knock out a QMS and pass a certification audit in a matter of months…you’re in for a load of grief. You’ll never get a solid QMS under you AND you’ll never make deadlines, because they’re unrealistic.
If you build a QMS because you want to provide your customers with the best everything — if customers are the reason for everything you do, including the QMS – you’ll take the time you need to get it right, you won’t set unrealistic goals and deadlines, and you won’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why you never meet expectations.
OK, so they’re not really easy steps…but the concept itself isn’t at all complicated. Each of the steps above is broken down into successively smaller pieces (things, activities, people, etc.) but if you start with the “big picture” and keep the big picture handy, you’ll do fine. Refer to it continually as you build. That’s where a lot of companies go wrong — they focus on just one part of the whole story as if that were the whole story, like the blind men and the elephant.
Keep your perspective. Remember — you’re in it for the long haul. Best of luck in your QMS journey, and let us know if you’d like our help.
Categories:
Customer Quality
Tags:
customer satisfaction • iso certification • QMS • quality management system
Bizmanualz has been at the forefront of deploying business best practices since 1995 delivering Policies, Procedures and Forms; quality systems implementation; and strategic business process improvement to help business owners achieve the growth and expansion they envision.
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Originally published in 2010 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title 7 Easy Steps to a Quality Management System. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com
One Response to “7 Easy Steps to a Quality Management System”
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January 2nd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Wow! Those seven steps are very very big picture. And one important requirement is a full cycle of internal audits must be completed before you can get certified by a third party registrar. That should be added to your list because your customer won’t get certified without it.
However, I suggest to your customer that they find a seasoned quality professional who has experience implemenating quality management systems or at least someone that has been responsible for the management of QMSs. It is necessary for a company to have their own internal resource responsible for the system. So they should hire someone full time and maybe in the short term a consultant to help the full time Quality person get the documentation established and implemented. No registrar wants to see a canned QMS being managed by someone that doesn’t understand it.