THE BASIC INGREDIENTS OF ISO 9001 COMPLIANCE

Whethere your company is trying to implement a quality program based on ISO 9001 standards, a few basic ingredients will lead to smooth sailing.

It is not the creation of the quality program or putting it on paper that is difficult, rather it is the execution of the plan that usually causes the problems.

Any quality plan can and will succeed using the following five ingredients:

• Management commitment and leadership
• Focus and alignment
• Training
• Measurement and feedback
• Fun and creativity

It sounds simple, but if even one of these five elements is missing, it will seriously hinder the implementation of your improvement programs, if not cause them to fail completely.

Management commitment and leadership

The first and most important part of any quality improvement effort is management commitment and leadership.

Simply stated without their commitment or demonstrated leadership, initiatives stall, fall substantially short of the expectation or just plain fail.

At the 5.1 point of ISO 9001 the standard says “Top management shall provide evidence of its commitment to the development and implementation of the Quality management System and continually improving its effectiveness.”
Often, the first step is to convince senior managers of the financial and wider benefits and overcome any barriers that they may have.

What are the barriers to getting started? Explain to senior managers that worthwhile savings can be made to overcome some of the barriers commonly experienced in an organisation:

• lack of money to fund a waste minimisation programme
• lack of resources and time
• low priority to develop a programme due to changes in the organisation's structure, processes or organisation
• staff working patterns
• fear of change

The item is typically accomplished by informational meetings, posters, information boards, performance review processes, company newsletters, new employee orientation, team briefing and so on.

Management commitment is more than just a verbal acknowledgment. Commitment is a passionate desire to do something and to see it through.

When management takes an active leadership role in the quality program, employees see it and get on the bandwagon.

Focus and alignment

An organization must have a visible, achievable, and communicated strategic or quality plan that the entire organization can rally around. You need a strategic framework to identify your vision, mission, key result areas, key result measures, and tactics.

• Vision. This is the organization’s long-term direction, indicating where it would like to be three to five years from now.
• Mission. The mission is the organization’s short-term direction, and it describes what the organization is, whom it serves, and what deliverables it provides. It generally covers the next one to two years.
• Key result areas. These are the major areas the company has chosen to focus on, such as having a winning team, excellent products, and world-class operations.
• Key result measures. Several key result measures are developed to determine if the business unit is successful in each of its key result areas.
• Tactics. These are the activities, tasks, and projects that the company will work on in each of the key result areas. The success of these projects is measured by the key result measures.

Keeping an organization focused on the critical few tactics and measures from the management level to the departmental and individual level requires visible leadership and communication, but it will yield excellent bottom-line results.

Training

Any successful organization needs a competent, knowledgeable, and motivated work force.

A primary way to build these qualities into the work force is through training, whether it be on the job. It should not, however, be just ad-hoc training; a formal training plan should be in place.

This plan should cover:

• Training requirements for all major job functions
• Individual training records showing progress toward meeting company training requirements
• A summary and trends showing the number of hours of training for new and existing employees

Training is so important that ISO 9001 standard have a category of requirements for a formal training plan and a disciplined approach to training.

Measurement and feedback

By providing employees with concrete measures of how they are progressing toward their key goals, an environment can be created in which continuous improvement is a way of life.

For measures to be effective they must also be:

• Specific. A vague, unclear measure is as bad as no measure. For example, “number of days of training” is a vague measure. Is this per person? Per year? What is being measured must be clear to those being measured
• Controllable. Those responsible for the measure must believe that they can influence it
• Understandable. If the measure is too complex, people won’t relate to it or know how to improve it. The measure needs to be easily understood by those who are trying to improve performance

Fun and creativity

Measuring, documenting, and maintaining records and prompting people to follow up on action items can be very boring. And when something is boring, it’s hard to get people motivated.

An atmosphere of fun and creativity can help. Many people think that fun and work do not go together, but bringing a fun, playful atmosphere to the workplace can make great things happen. Studies show that a fun atmosphere and a little humor promote creativity. Being creative can promote teamwork and enthusiasm.

Winning the race

Any successful team has an experienced, well-trained crew, leadership and commitment, a few focused goals, direction indicators, and some fun along the way. Whether your strategic or quality plan involves being No. 1 or just plain surviving, you can be a winner by executing it well.