Every enterprise has a strategy for growing sales.  But does your company include a strategic look at the Cost of Quality (COQ)?  If your strategy does not take into account your cost of quality then your strategy is only half-baked and you are likely to perform poorly.

What is Cost of Quality?

The cost of quality is typically explained as consisting of four elements: prevention, appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs.  But I have a simpler explanation.  Your business has three things to worry about:

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How do you apply lean to product development?  I like to think that you can apply lean to anything and product development is no exception.  Yet, product development is different than manufacturing, so the application of lean is different.  Manufacturing is about reducing variability to zero to create exact replicas.  Product development is about increasing variability enough to overcome your barriers to greatness – i.e. thinking outside the box.  Design is the opposite of manufacturing in the application of lean.

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A lot of companies are implementing lean systems to develop a lean competitive advantage, but then question if what they are doing is really lean.  Some people think applying lean is like applying six sigma.  But, Lean is not like six sigma. So how do you know when you have gotten lean?  In other words, what does lean look like?  Here are ten simple ways to tell how lean you really are.

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Lean thinking has been popularized by companies like Toyota, Apple, Dell, and many others.  But will practicing lean thinking produce a competitive advantage?

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Have you heard of Management by Objectives?  It was first popularized by Peter Drucker in the 1950’s.  This is basic goal setting, where you pick (or agree on with your employees) your objectives and then drive everyone to the result.  Results are important, but so is keeping control of your organization.  The problem with Management by Objectives is that we don’t want to become overly focused on the goals to the point where we begin to ignore the environment around us.  What’s better than Management by Objectives?

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Some people think that you can only implement lean in manufacturing.  What about in an office area like Human Resources (HR)? Can you implement lean in HR?

Fist you have to ask yourself what does HR do?  HR’s function is to support hiring and termination, training and development, benefit programs, HR compliance-safety and their own improvement projects.  There are five topics to discuss.

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Developing an ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS) requires a lot of effort to create a system, change employee behavior (management and workers), and obtain the desired results.  Many companies have successfully built an ISO QMS, passed their initial registration audit, and later failed to maintain all of the documents, records, and quality process activities.  Creating an ISO QMS is one thing but maintaining it can be just as difficult for your organization.

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What is the first thing you think of when you hear the term “ISO 9001“? Lengthy policies, complicated procedures, and miles of forms to fill out?  A bureaucracy that rivals the US government in size and complexity? Intense, week-long audits that make waterboarding seem like spa therapy? You may be misinformed — ISO 9001 is based on sound business practices and is designed to help your organization improve incrementally.

Now, what do you think of when you hear the term “lean“? Are you thinking “no fat”, as in Jack Sprat?  Do the words “efficient”, “effective”, or “no waste” come to mind?

If we put the two terms together, we get Lean ISO 9001, which means a quality management system (QMS) with no fat…an ISO 9001 system that is efficient, effective, and reduces waste within your organization. Who wouldn’t want that?

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Not all processes require procedure writing.  There’s a lot of overhead associated with every business procedure you write.  Therefore, the more business procedures you write, the more procedures you have to edit, implement, train, audit, and

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Lean approach simplifies the ISO 9001:2008 quality procedures manual and clearly points out the required QMS procedures and records.

St. Louis, MO – June 18, 2009 – Bizmanualz, Inc., a business publications, training, and consulting company based in St. Louis, MO, today announced the release of the updated ISO 9001 Policies and Procedures Manual. The company has greatly improved its product by modeling its policies and procedures on the Deming (“Plan-Do-Check-Act”) Cycle.

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