Quality systems are important in any industry and working environment. This report looks at a case study of a Maclean Ltd, a new business and its journey to achieving B.S.E.N ISO 9001 status. The company is a small firm about 80 employees, that doesn’t have any quality accreditation as of yet.
It is important to have proof to back up your abilities, whether you are a heating engineer working on a gas boiler (Gas safe register certification) or a large organisation producing baked goods, certification is important so your business can flourish and so the customer has confidence in your ability to do the work to a satisfactory level.
Quality management in a business is essential, it ensures the day to day running of the company is seamless, and it ensures the continuous high quality output from the business.
ISO 9001 is certification for a quality managed system. If a company has ISO 9001 certification then anyone who buys their products or works with said company knows that there are systems in place throughout the whole company to ensure a high quality consistent output. The key word there is consistent. A quality management system needs to ensure consistency in the finished product, so the customer is confident that the product is going to be fit for purpose and not going to fail. This needs to happen every time. To ensure consistency various tests are done before during and after the manufacturing stage, so we have pre inspection, testing the components that go into the product, batch testing, testing the first or a sample of the product from the batch, patrol inspection, where the site is patrolled and samples taken at random and then final inspection where the product is tested before it is shipped.
As the managing d...
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...’t working as well as we had hoped so we had to go back and improve it. We did expect this so we used it to our advantage to learn from where we were going wrong.
At the year mark we hired an ISO consultant to test us before we applied for the real thing, at this point we failed. But the feedback we received from the consultant was invaluable. We were confident that we could get our ISO9001 accreditation soon. So using the feedback from the consultant, the management made a big push to get it done within a year. The staff were very motivated at this point because of the trust and open communication we have built up during this process, and we managed to gain our accreditation at the two year mark. The organisation that we used to certify our business is the BSI group. They tested our business and then awarded us our ISO9001 accreditation based on those results.
ISO 9001 is a quality management standard that helps a company or an organisation to continually monitor quality across all operations. As an internationally recognised quality standard, it outlines ways to achieve, as well as
The Quality Plan (QP) proposed incorporates the philosophy of quality derived from many quality disciplines including Total Quality Management (TQM), ISO-9000, and Six Sigma, among others. The QP is comprised of three high level processes: Quality Planning, Quality Assurance, and Quality Control. As with other aspects of our proposal, the approach inherent in these three processes is highly proactive. The QP focuses on prevention rather than inspection because we recognize that it is more costly to fix rather than to prevent errors.
In the mid 1980s, and into the 1990s, business leaders realized that a renewed focus on quality was required to continue to compete in an expanding global market. (NIST, 2010) Consequently, several strategic frameworks were developed for managing, and measuring organizational performance. Among them were the Malcomb Baldrige National Quality Award, which was created by and act of congress and signed into law by the President in 1987, and The Balanced Scorecard, which is a performance management tool that was born out of research conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Robert S. Kaplan, and David P. Norton published in 1996 (Kaplan, 1996). Initially, the renewed emphasis on quality management systems was a reaction to the LEAN approach to quality management implemented by many Japanese businesses to great success post World War II.
First of all, the top management was clearly aware the importance of quality control. The company is one of the earliest companies to bear a vision of quality control in China. And the GM had attended modern management training from overseas, which made him focus on the establishment of quality control procedures.
Let’s take the example of Milliken & Co., largest textile company in the world. With its ‘Pursuit of Excellence’ initiative, Milliken was ahead of its competition in all 15 measures of customer satisfaction and won the Baldrige Award by focusing on commitment to customer satisfaction permeating through all company levels and locations. The company has constantly compared itself to its competitors and the best managed companies in the world and incorporated the best practices from them. The company has perfected the use of improvement teams to address specific problems and to change and improve processes in all areas of the company. It has also realized that quality management extends to all work
Quality improvement projects within my organization are evaluated through the methodology and must be approved by the Board. The evaluation process concentrates on methodical network and the organization’s implementation, this is monitored continuously and evaluated based on essential elements. The quality management program is based on four major components, including: facility-wide projects, system-wide quality activities, department-specific quality monitoring and process improvement
In summary, ISO 9001 strengths the ability of organization in automotive industry for quality assurance to create an effective quality management system and enables the system transparence for partners and third parties.
FedEx is constantly on the move, no matter how good their quality may be, they continue to look for ways to improve their customer service. Quality Driven Management (QDM), is an approach built on decades of experience, which FedEx has developed the highest levels of quality and leadership (n.d., Quality driven management to meet your needs, 2016). QDM pulls the best ideas and practices from many quality philosophies including Six Sigma, Lean and Total Quality Management to generate an approach to quality that is as unique as FedEx. Contrasting to most other approaches, QDM is best suited for a service business rather than manufacturing. Equating to QDM’s focus is always on the customer. FedEx aims to make every customers experience outstanding.
Even though Total Quality Management (TQM) has been replaced by other quality methodologies in many cases, organizations that have taken the long arduous journey to properly implement TQM benefited from it immensely [1]. While TQM may be perceived by many employees as just another passing fad that will soon fall by the wayside, the environmental conditions that exist within the organization will determine if TQM can be successfully implemented and take root. What is Total Quality Management (TQM)? TQM is a system of continuous improvement of work processes to enhance the organization’s ability to deliver high-quality products or services in a cost-effective manner [2].
verification ‐ to determine whether the EMS is meeting the specified standard e.g. ISO 14001
. ISO 14001 is a management standard, it is not a performance or product standard. The underlying purpose of ISO 14001 is that companies will improve their environmental performance by implementing ISO 14001, but there are no standards for performance or the level of improvement. It is a process for managing company activities that impact the environment.
Quality is a very important thing in an organization; therefore it is not possible to improve the quality of a product or service substantially without major changes in all aspects of the organization. Because quality is so important if changes aren’t made throughout the organization the output of the product will no be very successful. Everyone in the organization plays a major role in the out come of its products.
Audits are carried out annually in all departments to ensure there is conformity to the quality management systems within the hospital according to the international standard ISO 15189. In order to facilitate an effective quality management system, the international standard 9001 provides guidelines for this to occur.
It is known as ISO 9000 family and the ISO 9001 is the one which is concerned about the requirement of the QMS. Of course, that creates the needs for understanding these standards in order to get the certificate from the organization which is authorized by the ISO. That also creates the need for the training which is very important for companies to implement the QMS. The standards have been developed the course of the quality history from needing a quality control to a quality assurance. Basically, implementing a Quality Management System is important for companies to succeed in today’s market, and will enhance customer satisfaction, and improve internal process. It becomes more and more a necessity for international companies because it saves a lot of money in one hand and time in the other. Nevertheless, implementing such system requires an effort, training, and using consultant companies to ease the establishment of the system and to get the certificate eventually.
TQM is essential to be used by all the companies especially the manufacturing companies who have the responsibility to ensure about the quality of the product. TQM is being viewed as the boon and it is an approach for improving the quality and customer satisfaction in the long run and also reduces the amount of waste (www.businessknowledgesource.com). There are various components which have to be addressed in implementing the TQM they are Ethics, integrity, training, trust, teamwork, communication and recognition (www.businessknowledgesource.com).