Managers' workshop

Frustrated with your quality system? Really running the organization with your business system, tripping over the cumbersome quality management system? Not making the money you know you could? Then you need a Midwest Manager's Workshop!

We work with the top management team to develop the few keys which transform a wasteful system into a change engine driving improvement in productivity, quality, and profit. Most managers never understand their vital importance to making the quality management system good for the business, not just good for their customers and the registrar. Too often they cede the system to the quality "experts" who lack their focus on business success. Face it, a business has to be a success to satisfy anyone, including the customer.

The workshop starts with the quality policy and objectives. These tools are given to management as a place to insert what is important to the business. So a quality policy like "We meet or exceed customer expectations and continually improve the quality system" is not likely to be relevant to business success. A policy like "We work every day to increase sales by intense customer focus while we reduce cost in all areas" is a bit more focused on what the business needs and how the management team plans to get there. The following slide from the workshop gets tothe point:

The managers are lead to work on the key points of the standard they are registered to, with workshop exercises developing the 9 answers which the quality department needs to use to keep the quality management system relevant to management.

Each workshop is tailored to the size ad needs of the organization. Other areas of interest from the ISO 9001:2000 standard are:
Some Important Aspects of ISO 9001 for business Success

The following 16 points highlight some of the ISO 9001:2000 clauses which, when implemented together as a Quality System, will lead to the greater success in the Organization. The underlying power is a new "ISO capability" for top managers to be able to push ahead on all of these fronts simultaneously, without their direct intervention, but by the coordinated action of the ISO team.

General requirements (4.1). In these clauses top management has to "identify the organization’s processes … determine their sequence and interaction…" This requirement helps focus the organization on those processes which deliver value to the customer. These will be monitored to see that they are working as expected (see #13 below). Understanding which process you need to get right is a critical first step.

Establish and deploy the quality policy and objectives (5.3 & 5.4.1). These clauses focus the entire organization on the same goals. It is optimum to have measurables which each person could tally up at the end of the day to see how they did. These individual measurements are totaled by "department" or area, and finally for the. Top management can see the overall trends, and "drill down" to see the drivers, and offer congratulations or provide resources as necessary. Such "pyramid" metrics (from a broad base to one point at the top) are difficult to devise, but very valuable to drive change across the board.

Responsibility and authority and Internal communication (5.5.1 & 5.5.3). People need to be crystal clear about their responsibility to carry out tasks and their authority to allocate resources and make decisions. Maintaining people’s roles so that there is clarity, and maintaining these current in today’s dynamic organizations requires excellent communication. These aspects are business 101 issues, but almost every organization needs to improve to prevent politics interfering with responsiveness.

Competence, awareness, and training (6.2.2). An organization is people, and humans all need help. Building, maintaining and growing the competence of the employees is the heart of the organization, and a substantial expense. This area is a great opportunity.
Infrastructure and work environment (6.3 & 6.4). People need the tools of the trade and the environment (including a psychological environment) to do their best. As with competence above, these areas present a huge opportunity. Remember, section 6 is the "plan"section where top management prepares the people to "do" in section 7.

Planning for product realization (7.1). Each "product" requires planning to determine and provide the specific resources people need to do the work correctly and profitably. An organization typically has many such plans for various activities. This clause brings these together as a system, and establishes a new product planning process to introduce new items. Change is the goal of the ISO program, and this clause addresses product changes needed to grow sales.

Customer related processes (7.2). These clauses are the heart and soul of ISO 9001. Once you know and agree to provide something, the rest of ISO is really there to ensure that you know you provided what you agreed to provide. Review of the customer orders is one of the ways the organization addresses this issue, and might benefit from the details of the ISO considerations. This clause also includes customer communications which are always a problem when personnel are not in the office.

Design and development (7.3). Many organizations do not do design, but for those who do ISO has a simple formula to recommend. The section addresses the need to design, verify and validate the product, and track progress to completion. The design function can be simple or complex, and this section facilitates control. Time is often a forgotten issue in the design process.

Purchasing (7.4). The organization needs "raw materials" which go into the products, and spending is always an issue; and this clause addresses the need to control spending. There is a huge change going on in the purchasing world relating to just-in-time and "supplier partnerships." This clause encourages simple goals in navigating through these changes.

Service provision (7.5). These clauses govern the quality, quantity, and cost of the work people do off-site. Many organizations have no service in this sense. Addressing service helps ensure that what happens at the customer location is as well controlled as the work on the factory floor, with QC, maintenance, and management there for support.

Customer satisfaction (8.2.1). ISO requires that the organization "monitor information relating to customer perception." When done well, addressing this clause provides an excellent early warning system as to how the customers are reacting to changes within the organization. Change is the purpose of the Quality System, and finding about unhappiness in a customer after they leave allows little room for correction during change.

Internal audit (8.2.2). A good internal audit "listens" to the organization and presents a fact-based answer to a question from to top management, to help them determine the need for change. Audit can be a routine checking on the status of aspects of the business, or an emergency response to a problem. In all cases it is a way for management to obtain information to help them decide and act correctly.

Monitoring and measurement of processes (8.2.3). The important processes within the organization are measured, and the results compared to plan to see where progress is acceptable, and where resources are needed. This is another of the ISO feedback loops to keep management aware of how change is progressing within the organization.

Monitoring and measuring of product (8.2.4). This clause requires that you have information that the service provided to your customer meet the criteria you agreed to with the customer in 7.2. This is what most people think of as quality, and it is of crucial importance in just-in-time, "lean" world. It is useful to point out that the activities of "inspection" are not value-added to the customer. This area is of potential significance.

Control of nonconforming product & analysis of data (8.3 & 8.4). This clause requires that when someone makes a mistake, the organization has to do something to ensure that the problem does not get out to the customer. But this clause allows you to "listen to the processes" to collate and present what is going wrong (not done right the first time) so that resources can be provided in a prioritized manner to prevent reoccurrence. So billing errors, late and absent employees, computer malfunctions, scheduling problems, machine downtime, late work, etc. can all be tracked as appropriate to see that change is happening. It does not take data to see that something changed by half (twice as many reports are late) but it does take data to detect a slight.

Corrective and preventive action (8.5.2 & 8.5.3). These clauses require systems for fixing significant problems. This is the formalization of the organization’s risk management program. The management question is not that problems exist, but which one is the next most important for the organization to spend resources on to fix now? These clauses require that the organization track the formal projects which management assigns to drive change. Many other aspects of the standard drive change as well, and the organization has to have a system to and then make sure it is fixed before moving on to the following issue.

Meet the requirements of the ISO standard, and a business will have the organization and focus which will achieve the policy and objectives set by top management. When these relate to increased sales and reduced costs the organization profit will increase, and the managers will become true believers that ISO is an important tool.