Quality Management System Approaches to Improve an Organizations Performance - Assignment Example

Work Sheet – CLO5. Recommend quality management system approaches to improve an organizations performance. Why should an organization analyze quality and excellence? An organization should analyze quality and excellence so as to determine the appropriate ways to improve the quality of its output without necessarily increasing costs for its service providers, manufacturers and consumers. How would and organization analyze quality and excellence? What tools would they use? To analyze for its quality and excellence, an organization would collect and analyze suitable data that would be used to establish whether the quality management system, QMS is effective and suitable. The organization would seek to determine if the data shows any continual improvement with regards to customer satisfaction, product quality conformity and product and processes trends. Statistical tools would be used for this analysis and they include check sheets, scatter diagrams, cause and effect diagrams, run charts and control charts and histograms. What is improvement in relation to a service/product? Improvement refers to the setting up of processes, including procedures, tools and people, which would improve quality and at the same time reduce real costs by curbing on wastage and defective services and goods. This encompasses improving performance, increasing suitability, enhancing reliability, increasing longevity and also making the appearance of products or services better. What is maintenance of a service/product? The performance of a process could deteriorate. Maintenance refers to the restoration of the performance of such a process that has deteriorated back to its normal performance level, thus a null improvement in the capability of the process. What is the difference between improvement and maintenance in a service/product? Improvement causes a product or service to attain new, greater performance level, thus making such a product or service more consistent and reliable and less prone to errors from the operator. On the other hand, maintenance refers to the restoration of a process back to its original level of performance, hence, unlike improvement, has no net effect on the capability of the product or service. What is continual improvement? Continual improvement refers to the constant or recurrent quest for improved services, products or processes continuously, without ever getting satisfied with the present conditions. What are the requirements of ISO9000 in relation to continual improvement? In relation to continual improvement, ISO 9000 requires the use of Plan-Do-Check-Act, PDCA cycle geared towards continually improving process performance. Plan entails establishment of objectives and processes needed to deliver results in line with customer needs; do entails implementation of these processes; check refers to monitoring and measuring products or services and processes against set policies, requirements and objectives; and act involves undertaking action to continually improve the performance of processes. It also requires continual improvement of the effectives of quality management system, QMS. With regards to top management, ISO 9000 requires that they work towards continual improvement of QMS effectiveness. What is the difference between world practice and best practice? World practice merely seeks to attain the performance that would make an organization good enough in comparison to the other players from the global market. On the other hand, best practice entails a constant search for raising the bars for performance and quality in an organization and its products and services. Which is best for an organization? Why? The best for an organization is best practice. The reason why best practice is the best for an organization is because this enables the organization to go beyond good enough to the point of continuous search for increasing performance and quality for its processes and products and services. What is management responsibility in ISO 9000? Management responsibility in ISO 9000, as articulated in its clause 5, entails the role of the management in QMS regarding the commitment of management, customer focus, management review and quality policy communication, authority and responsibility. What is management commitment? Why is it important? Management commitment refers to the responsibility that the top management has to provide leadership and also actively engage in improving quality management system in an organization. This would be evidenced by the top management relaying the significance of adhering to customer, regulatory and statutory requirements to the organization, ensuring resources are available, conducting management reviews, ensuring the establishment of quality objectives and setting up the quality policy. It is important because it fosters the development and maintenance of efficient and effective quality management systems. Who is the customer in an organization? A customer is that person or organization that benefits from the processes, products or services of an organization for a valuable consideration. How does an organization focus on the customer? To focus on the customer, an organization, through its top management, seeks to understand both the current and future needs of its customers and determine such needs of customers with the aim of fulfilling them so as to enhance customer satisfaction. What processes could an organization put in place to ensure customer focus? To ensure customer focus, an organization should research and understand the needs and expectations of its customers. It should then ensure the organizational objectives relate to the needs and expectations of the customers. These needs and expectations of customers would then be communicated throughout the organization. Customer satisfaction would be measured and results provide basis for action. This should lead to systematic management of customer relationships. Eventually, a balanced approach should be chosen in seeking to satisfy the customers and the other interested parties like owners, financiers, employees and the local community. How could an organization measure customer focus? An organization could measure customer focus through management reviews. This would include reviewing input which includes external and internal audit results, customer feedback, performance of processes and conformity of products, the position of corrective and preventive actions, changes that could influence QMS and improvement recommendations. The output, including revenues and market share, effectiveness in use of organizational resources and customer loyalty, could also provide significant information to measure customer focus. What is a quality policy? A quality policy refers to a brief document or statement which defines the quality goals and objectives of an organization, intent for commitment and compliance with the requirements set by ISO 9000, regulatory and legal authorities to promote continual improvement of the effectiveness of QMS. Why is a quality policy important to an organization? A quality policy is important to an organization because it provokes commitment and compliance to the requirements put forth by legal and regulatory authorities which seek to foster continual improvement of the effectiveness of quality management system. It sets out the quality objectives targeted and specifies the requisite processes and resources needed to support and operate the processes involved. How does an organization plan a quality policy? Who is involved in developing a quality policy? Planning a quality policy by an organization involves ensuring its appropriateness to the purpose for which the organization exists. It should elicit commitment to compliance with the set requirements and continual improvement of the QMS. Additionally, the planning of a quality policy should provide the framework to establish and review quality objectives. This would then be communicated within the organization, ensuring that it is well understood. It should then be reviewed for its continuous suitability. The top management is involved in developing a quality policy. According to ISO 9000 management responsibility whom has the authority? ISO 9000 gives authority to the management representative given the defined authority by the top management and the same communicated to the entire organization. According to ISO 9000 management responsibility what are the communication processes? Who should communicate and how? The management responsibility articulated by ISO 9000 defines communication processes as the channels within an organization through which communication on the effectiveness of QMS takes place. These include briefings, surveys, meetings and employee involvement among others. Communication should be done by a management representative given such responsibility and authority by the top management. This would be done by such a representative first ensuring the identification, implementation and maintenance of QMS processes. The performance and improvement would then be reported to the top management. Eventually, the representative would promote the awareness of customer requirements throughout the organization. What is resource management? Why is it important to manage resources? Resource management refers to the determination of the required resources and subsequently providing the resources. With regards to human resource, it would refer to its conformity to the requirements of a service or products through competent performance of tasks with the quality management system. Managing resources is important to ensure that the products or services produced meet the QMS requirements and that human resource used is competent to deliver such products or services. According to ISO 9000 how are management responsible for resource management? Management is responsible for determination of the required resources and subsequently providing these resources as needed. In case of human resource, the management is responsible for their competence, training and also awareness where it determines the required competence, provides training where applicable, evaluates effectiveness, ensures staff awareness on important activities and maintains proper education, experience and training skills records. What is monitoring and management? Monitoring and management refers to the determination of the product conformity to QMS and ensuring that this conformity is attained. According to ISO 9000 what is management responsible for in monitoring and measurement? ISO 9000 gives the responsibility of the management in monitoring and measurement as monitoring and measuring production processes and the resultant products; preventing products that fail to conform to QMS standards from being delivered; ensuring that there is continued effectiveness and suitability of the QMS; and continually improving the QMS and service or product. Why is analysis of data important in and organization? Analysis of data is important to an organization because it helps in the determination of the data to be collected and collecting it to establish the effectiveness and suitability of the quality management system. Secondly, it helps in evaluating continual improvement to determine where it could be made more effective. Finally, analysis of data is important in demonstrating customer satisfaction, trends of processes, the conformity of products to specifications, data on suppliers and opportunities to enforce preventive measures. What are some data analysis tools? How could data be analyzed? Data analysis tools include statistical tools like check sheets, Pareto charts, histograms, cause and effect diagrams, scatter diagrams and run and control charts. Intensive improvement would call for more complex tools such as the failure mode and effect analysis, FMEA and statistical process control, SPC. Data should be analyzed by using the collected data to determine customer satisfaction, establish the conformity of products to set requirements, evaluate suppliers data to retrieve useful information and determine the trends of products and processes which include opportunities to apply preventive measures. Read More