The following points will help you quickly find out how far you are in quality management. If you have gaps, start closing them as soon as possible. You may be surprised that insignificant activities will save you a lot of time and money. It is not necessary to start ISO certification immediately.
- Each product/service is precisely specified in terms of what the customer expects.
- The company has a concise and formulated quality policy that all employees will understand.
- The organization has a clear and simple mapping of all its core processes so that the critical impacts on cost, time and customer satisfaction are easy to understand.
- Responsibility for achieving the quality of products and services is delegated to the lowest level, while the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the result is clearly defined in the company’s management.
- Management understands and minimizes their quality costs (by preventing quality failures, measuring quality performance, compensating and correcting failures).
- The quality of incoming deliveries is monitored to the maximum extent possible by using approved testing and exit inspection procedures by the supplier to minimize overall control costs.
- Quality problems, whether of inputs, processes or outputs, are systematically monitored so that trends can be detected and corrective measures are taken or, if appropriate, product or process changes.
- Staff in all areas are trained in improvement procedures (problem identification, problem analysis and problem-solving) and motivated to be creative while maintaining appropriate expenditure control to avoid harmful effects elsewhere in the organization.
- Complaints coming to the organization are registered and analyzed, so positive measures can be taken to eliminate them (there may even be a strengthening of relationships with dissatisfied customers) and long-term measures to prevent the recurrence of complaints.
- Quality development charts are available at all levels of the organization, with details and frequency appropriate to the process, product, or service.
- Competitors’ products and services are under scrutiny, so management is fully informed of their position concerning alternative sources of supply to customers.
- Quality assurance concepts and tools are used to produce and deliver the organization’s leading products and services and all aspects of quality, including environmental, health, safety, security, etc.