If you have a company, regardless of the sector, you must know that quality is a fundamental aspect. To achieve it, Quality Management Systems were born, such as the well-known ISO 9001, one of the most important globally. At La Lonja de la Innovación we have a team of mentors expert in different areas of entrepreneurship that help the accelerated startups suring this important process.
Today, so you also can make it, we bring you this post in which we want to delve a little deeper into it, tell you about its key principles and the specific steps to achieve it, take notes!
What are Quality Management Systems?
Quality management of a company consists of planning, coordinating and evaluating every step and aspects related to the quality of your company. To ease this task, it is essential to implement a Quality Management System, which will help you organize your company's management and production based on optimized and standardized processes. In addition, implementing these systems allow you to satisfy your clients and meet industry requirements and standards.
Implementing a Quality Management System is essential, since if you don’t guarantee the quality in your processes and the satisfaction of your clients, your company will hardly succeed. That’s why you must align everything so that your team knows how to guarantee the quality in your processes. In addition, it provides numerous benefits to companies.
- It ensures quality in your products and services
- Allows to control better the intern processes
- Reduces errors and, therefore, unwanted costs
- Promotes continuous improvement
- Increases customer satisfaction
As the ISO 9001 is the most popular and used, we will focus on explaining how to achieve this certification, but first, it is important to know which are the seven principles of quality management and of this standard so you can understand it better:
- Customer focus. Actions and activities done within your company must be oriented towards meeting the customers needs with the objective of increasing their satisfaction. That is, the clients must be the priority.
- Leadership. To implement Quality Management Systems, the leadership must have a clear involvement in the entire process, and the leader must ensure that everything functions properly. However, this does not only refer to the top management of a company but also to people who are in charge of different work teams, so there will be many leadership positions.
- Team commitment. Employees in the company should work in harmony and be committed to their work. According to ISO 9001:2015, employees need knowledge and autonomy to create value for customers, so companies must train their employees to make this happen.
- Process Approach. Companies must work by processes and not by activities, this leads to setting indicators to monitor the evolution in each of them.
- Continuous improvement process. Progress, innovation, and process improvement are fundamental in a company and are something that management systems strive for, so that errors decrease and processes improve
- Evidence-based decision making. Quality Management Systems provide the necessary elements to make evidence-based decisions. It is important to measure and monitor all processes within a company to make the right decisions. This helps reduce levels of uncertainty.
- Relationship management. It is important to consider the company's partners, as they have influence within the organization, and it is important to establish good relationships with them to succeed.
How to implement it?
You now know what a Quality Management System is and the benefits it can bring. Now, we’ll explain how to implement it in your company, focusing on the ISO 9001.
- Understand and share the ISO 9001 Standard and project. This is an obvious step but often forgotten. You cannot start implementing this standard without first understanding all its aspects. Additionally, it is important that all employees at all levels of the company also understand it. There is a course on ISO 9001 Analysis and Interpretation that facilitates this task.
- Plan the task. Here, you should first conduct a diagnosis of your company's current state, considering the requirements of the standard that you have previously studied and identifying areas for improvement. Once done, you need to design a work plan to properly address the training and technological resource needs; establish your quality and satisfaction objectives; identify actions to address risks and opportunities, set deadlines, and assign responsibilities to carry out the project, etc.
- Address training and education needs.You need to identify your company's weaknesses that need improvement. To do this, it is important to know your employees well. It is likely that not all of them are trained and qualified for this project, which is why the ISO 9001:2015 standard states that a trial and error model will be used during the implementation of a Quality Management System. On the other hand, it is important to have employees capable of professionally auditing the system, proposing corrective actions, conducting follow-ups, and promoting continuous improvement.
- Document preparation. The main documents are: quality policy, quality objectives, system scope, organization context, interested parties and their needs and expectations, procedures, and work instructions.
- Implement the system in practice. Once everything mentioned above is ready, you should start implementing the Quality Management System. There are two ways to do this: you can either put it into practice while documentation is being prepared, which usually works very well. Or, the other option is to implement it once all documentation is ready. However, this can lead to the practice contradicting what has been documented, requiring corrections.
- Audit of the system. This tool is very effective in ensuring everything works correctly and promoting continuous improvement. You can choose to hire external consultants to carry out this step or have professionals within your company trained to conduct such evaluations, which is the most recommended.
- Correct, review and re-audit. The first audit will likely indicate areas that need correction. Therefore, once done and the necessary modifications identified, the process should be repeated. The more audits you conduct, the more likely you are to obtain the certification on the first try.
- Request the certification audit. Your company is now ready. The final step is to obtain the certification. To do this, find the certification body, according to the list of authorized ones in your country, and undergo a new audit, this time the certification audit, which will allow you to have a Quality Management System based on ISO 9001:2015. If you do not obtain the certification, don't worry; you will not have to start the process from zero. Instead, address the issues that caused the failure, resolve them, and reapply for the certification audit three months later.
In conclusion, implementing a Quality Management System is a fundamental process that requires commitment, alignment, and effort. However, the benefits it will bring to your company will make the work worthwhile.