Introduction
To guarantee long-term value creation, companies that trade in both products and services must deploy effective quality management systems. Such systems entail initiatives, policies, plans, specific procedures, processes, resources, and incentives aligned consistently that they can play critical roles in maintaining a satisfied customer. For the systems to operate effectively in contributing to the overall business success, they must be in line with the strategic direction. Research in quality management systems began with predictable outcomes. For example, simple figures, coupled with random sampling, were mainly used as quality management tools for industrial production lines.
As time progressed through the 20th century, new dynamics emerged, thereby requiring effective quality management. Labor has become one of the most expensive industrial inputs. Hence, industrial communities shifted their focus on quality management to aspects such as cooperation among work teams (Juran, 2009). In the 21st century, transparency, coupled with sustainability, formed the most important aspects integrated into quality management systems. Despite the need to consider these historical developments, the current paper is not about the witnessed advancement of quality management systems. Rather, it discusses the requirements for quality management systems, evaluates its basic requirements, and discusses its principles. In the last section, it sets out the difference between quality systems and quality manual.
Quality Management System Requirements
Regulated companies across the globe are emphasizing the need for quality management. Consequently, companies that are adopting value management are responding to this need by developing applications that comply with quality needs. This move has resulted in a wide variety of vendor choices. While the strategy is important for organizations since they have several dealers to choose from, Priede (2012) insists that it may lead to investment in inappropriate solutions. The author explains that this situation may occur due to the implementation of quality management systems that lack “key value administration requirements” (Priede, 2012, p.1467). Such requirements determine the organizations’ success. Hence, failing to observe them can be a grave blunder. This claim underlines the need for an organization to consider some key quality management system requirements. According to Master Control (2017), such requirements include suppleness or control, real aptitude, project scalability, seamless moderator integration, and fast/easy integration.
In terms of suppleness or real intelligence, an organization must have the capability of identifying the parameters of quality being measured. Hence, real intelligence is a vital requirement of quality systems. It guarantees the ability to see and measure the dynamics of a quality system. To this extent, an organization must ensure that it implements quality management solutions that are on par with its capabilities in data collection, searching, processing, and reporting. In terms of project scalability, quality management systems need to be capable of expanding in terms of use throughout the whole organization’s life without the need for extensive licensing agreements, limitations, and technical hitches. Hence, an organization should not just vend and implement a quality management system solution that currently meets its capacity without considering expansion in the future.
This consideration may include the room for scaling to include multiple suppliers, customers, and contract manufacturers, among other elements. In the context of third-party integration, quality management systems should connect with other business structures. The structures may include production systems and financial frameworks, among others. This connectivity ensures that the system can provide a bird’s eye view of all quality-based dynamics within an organization. Seamless integration ensures increased visibility with the outcome of better compliance.
Besides, quality control systems should comply with the established existing organizational process. They should accommodate the existing business structures coupled with information architectures and infrastructures. Besides being easy to configure, quality systems should have user-friendly interfaces. This provision permits high-level user flexibility coupled with system control. In terms of ease of implementation, irrespective of the capability of quality management systems, they should be easy and fast to implement. Otherwise, a probability exists that the system may never be fully implemented or utilized by an organization. This situation explains why solutions such as master control are ideal for any organization when it comes to meeting its quality management quests (Master Control, 2017). Such solutions ensure that an organization begins to meet its compliance goals immediately after quality system configuration.
Evaluation of the Basic Requirements of a Quality Management System
Quality management systems are critical in ensuring coordination, direction, and monitoring all activities to facilitate the achievement of organizational needs aimed at realizing customer anticipations coupled with regulatory requirements. Consequently, there is a need for any quality management framework to meet certain basic requirements. An organization must have a declaration of its quality policy and value objectives (Westgard & Westgard, 2014).
Indeed, quality entails an initiative that requires critical decisions and directions from the top management. Quality systems necessitate the commitment of financial resources to put in place various goal-oriented processes and procedures. For example, as a quality practice, all supplies must be inspected and audited to verify their compliance with production system quality standards. Hence, every organization must have its management tasked to set out a clear direction that demonstrates its commitment to the desired quality decisions through an organizational quality policy. Such a quality policy must aim at achieving something in line with the set goals. Therefore, every quality management system must have a clear quality objective or a set of objectives.
The quality manual constitutes yet an important basic requirement of any quality management system. Procedures and practices require documentation to help track the degree to which they help realize quality policy and objectives (Westgard & Westgard, 2014). Therefore, an organization with a quality system that does not have control documents, records of control, internal audits, preventive and control actions, and documentation of products and services control mechanisms fail to conform to the standards established in the quality policy and objectives. Hence, it lacks a clear strategic focus on quality. Such documents act as the quality manual, which functions as the guideline to realize predetermined quality requirements of an organization’s products and services.
Thirdly, every quality management system must have procedures and instructions. Quality management is achieved through a set of actions that must be completed to achieve quality commitment agendas. This goal cannot be realized without a set of executable procedures and instructions. For example, in service sector organizations such as the hotel industry, a service quality procedure may involve the greeting and welcoming customers.
This requirement is translated into a form of instructions. For instance, “as a customer attendant, you must greet and welcome the client to our business premises before taking his or her orders.” Other important procedural activities include records on potential opportunities for quality improvement, generation, and data storage to facilitate the management of quality, records on internal process, value analysis, and information on how to guarantee customer service or product satisfaction.
Quality Management Systems Principles
Different words and principles in quality management systems may have different meanings depending on the organization’s nature that is implementing them. However, the ISO family of quality standards offers some basic and standardized definitions of various terms. This section discusses some of such terms. The terms can be classified as related to quality management and quality systems management.
Quality Management
Quality management implies various coordinated activities aimed to directly control organizations to ensure conformity to the established standards. Quality refers to the degree of adherence to some set requirements (Westgard & Westgard, 2014). The process of quality management requires an understanding of quality guidelines, quality aims, quality forecasts, quality assurance, quality control, and quality enhancement.
Quality improvement
It focuses on all activities and processes that increased the capacity to meet quality requirements as time progresses
Quality planning
The term refers to all activities that involve the setting of quality objectives coupled with making specifications for operational processes necessary to realize quality objectives.
Quality assurance
This quality management component aims to create confidence that various quality requirements should meet. For example, in testing the business environment, organizations engage in raw materials, procedures, and supplies monitoring (Lee & Dale, 2008). Personnel training on quality, the testing of proficiencies, quality control, calibrations, and even recordkeeping are also part of quality assurance (Lee & Dale, 2008).
Quality control
The principle refers to an element of quality management whose focus is on meeting requirements by, for instance, controlling various input parameters or through process monitoring.
Quality policy
Refers to top management’s expression and statements declaring the appropriate intentions and directions for guiding quality processes and procedures in an organization.
Quality objective
Refers to anything that sought to be achieved concerning quality.
Quality Management System
Any organization’s quality management systems focus on controlling and directing a business entity to achieve its quality requirements. To this extent, Lee and Dale (2008) argue, “Systematic, and process-oriented efforts are essential in meeting quality objectives” (p.217). Quality management systems include an organization’s technical and management capabilities necessary to help meet the preferred quality levels. Hence, quality management systems may be broken down into two perspectives.
Quality system
The term refers to all organizational frameworks, actions, resources, and processes required to implement quality management.
Quality system essentials
Involve all management activities coordinated to control and direct organizations in matters of quality.
The Difference between Quality System and Quality Manual
Quality systems and quality manuals are different in terms of the aspects of quality management they emphasize. However, the ultimate goal of the two is to realize the desired quality of an organization’s products and services. The quality manual establishes documentation that defines and describes an organization’s quality management system (Westgard & Westgard, 2014). Its constituent elements are the statement of the quality guiding principle, value policies, homogeneous operation procedures, and work directions. The quality policy statement provides a precise and clear statement of an organization’s commitment to quality, which is then elaborated in the quality manual’s value policies aspect.
Quality policies are in-depth documentation for the appropriate actions that an organization is dedicated to taking in quality matters. It notes the establishment, documentation, and procedures for maintaining a quality management system (Kumar & Balakrishnan, 2011). It shows the top management’s commitment to the declared quality policy statements through the support of initiatives such as resource assurance to guarantee the quality system’s establishment and smooth running. The element also shows what goes on in an organization. For example, it states the organization’s primary goal, for instance, the production of products and services in a manner that all activities are measured and monitored for compliance (Westgard & Westgard, 2014).
The standard operation procedures clearly define all the parties that should undertake the necessary action(s) to comply with the quality policy statement and policies. Hence, it responds to the question relating to who would take the prescribed actions. Also, it discusses timeframes for the implementation of quality systems (Westgard & Westgard, 2014). It also answers the question of when the quality system would start to function and for how long.
Work instructions entail specific procedures that describe the precise manner of how to carry out the different activities of the quality system. However, such descriptions are not an integral part of the quality manual, although their references are made in standard operating procedures. To this extent, Westgard and Westgard (2014) assert that they are reserved as separate but affiliated sets of quality system documentation. Nevertheless, these particular procedures include describing a business entity’s system of quality management right from “an explanation of the overall system through related processes and down into the procedures and work instructions” (Kumar & Balakrishnan, 2011, p.152). It is important to note that not all the documentation relates to the description of any single product or service. Rather, a description captures the general manner of running an organization.
Contrastingly, quality systems are comprised of various efforts necessary for different activities coupled with requirements that must be followed to ensure that the product or service is produced and delivered as designed within the parameters of the established and documented quality manual. Hence, it may be argued that the quality system is the implemented value initiative described in the manual. Thus, the manual guides the operation of the quality system. Quality systems have value assurance and control as some of their most important procedures (Westgard & Westgard, 2014). Quality assurance is a set of activities and decisions taken before the actual production begins. It mainly focuses on improving the processes for minimal non-conformity to be recorded. Quality control is reactive. It involves the actual inspections coupled with monitoring the production process accompanied by measuring the produced products to ensure that they correspond to the established quality parameters.
Conclusion
All organizations develop and implement a set of necessary actions that ensure that their products or services conform to some prescribed criteria of performance or utility. This process begins with clear top management’s commitment to quality, expressed through the value system statements, and supported through quality policies. Through the quality manual, an organization acquires a means of guiding the value system via actions such as quality control, among other important aspects that are collectively packaged in a management framework that can be run in an automated manner, for instance, through a computer system. Such a system must have certain requirements, including flexibility and ease of implementation.
References
Juran, J. (2009). Juran’s quality handbook. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Publications.
Kumar, D., & Balakrishnan, V. (2011). A study on ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) certifications: Reasons behind the failure of ISO certified organizations. Journal of Research in International Business and Management, 1(6), 147-154.
Lee, R., & Dale, B. (2008). Business process management: a review and evaluation. Business Process Re-engineering & Management Journal, 4(3), 214–225.
Master Control. (2017). Quality management system (QMS) requirements. Web.
Priede, J. (2012). Implementation of quality management system ISO 9001 in the world and its strategic necessity. Social and Behavioral Sciences, 58(1), 1466-1475.
Westgard, J., & Westgard, S. (2014). Basic quality management systems. Web.