Christel Fouche

Quality Management Systems: Charting the Journey

  • November 12th, 2008

Quality Management Systems have a few pre-requisites. You need to understand them before you can get down to developing or evaluating any Quality Management System (QMS).

Sequencing is important and cross-checks should be done between these areas throughout the process.

VISION

Managers and employees need to focus their efforts on working towards achieving a common goal. Everyone must move in the same direction and at the same pace. A well thought out vision, mission, and strategy are critical to establish your company’s frame of reference and benchmark your performance against your objectives:

  • Where do you see your company or business unit in the future?
  • What opportunities are available to you that you want to take advantage of?

Christopher Columbus was convinced that “there was something else out there” and he and a group of like minded people set about finding it.

A Vision Statement is a statement of intent - making a commitment to yourself and your stakeholders. It’s the “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. It’s the success story that prevents complacency and keeps pushing you on to further horizons, to greater accomplishments, and to making plans to achieve your dream. Your vision should not change very much over a period of time.

Your Mission Statement should broadly define the boundaries and routes that you’ll use to keep you from taking too many detours or unplanned excursions along the road to your final destination or objectives. Your mission can be changed as your business grows and takes on broader or more focused initiatives in response to market needs and trends.

Early explorers were convinced that other lands existed and that these would hold treasures and resource opportunities that could be traded across many shores. They decided on the key issues that they would need to focus their efforts on to gain access to these resources. In achieving their objectives they were able to successfully open up new trade routes and start commercial operations in a global market.

Your Strategy will provide a blue print for the approach you are going to follow to bring all of the different functions together to make a complete picture. It maps out the general area that you will cover when travelling towards your destination.

Successful companies anticipate the future and prepare for it. Many managers spend most of their time focusing on “the now” - with little thought as to where they want or need to be in three years time, and more importantly - how they’re going to get there! This inhibits growth because their time is largely spent on “putting out the fires” when the resources at their disposal (man : money : machines and materials) are not matched to the outputs that the client wants or demands.

PLANNING IS CRITICAL

Before you start writing specific policies make sure that you have a marker to check the content and context of each management area against. “Strategy” is another word for planning -i.e. how are you going to approach the achievement of your objectives and goals. Policies set the scene and procedures determine the steps you will take.

Strategic management is part of a process, which includes setting a vision that upholds the values of the firm; defining a mission, and determining the operational objectives.

Gleuck and Jauch refer to strategic planning [1] as:

“Strategic management is a stream of decisions and actions which lead to the development of an effective strategy or strategies to help achieve corporate objectives and goals. The strategic management process is the way in which strategists determine objectives and make strategic decisions.”

“Strategic decisions are means to achieve ends. These decisions encompass the definition of the business, products and markets to be served, functions to be performed, and major policies needed for the organisation to execute these decisions to achieve objectives.”

“Plans and policies are guides to action. They indicate how resources are to be allocated and how tasks assigned to the organisation might be accomplished so that functional-level managers execute the strategy properly.”

“A strategic business unit (SBU) is an operating division of a firm which serves as a distinct product-market segment or which has a well-defined set of customers or a specific geographic area. The Unit is given the authority to make its own strategic decisions within corporate guidelines as long as it meets corporate objectives.”

Employees often look at strategic management as something that is carried out at executive level and feel that it does not have any real importance in their daily work. This is not true! If you understand the strategy of the company, you can benchmark yourself, your department, and your company’s performance.

The development of business plans are important and you should appreciate their purpose and value in business management.

A typical business plan would document information that links markets, resource requirements and sales and cash flow projections. Much of this is based on critical assumptions but up-front research is critical to base these assumptions on in the first place.

This information acts as a benchmark to measure overall company financial performance. Financial forecasts are made and approved based on the information in the business plan. Resource costs are estimated and the information is used to determine anticipated profits and potential for expansion and growth. Documented plans are used to attract investments or raise capital, or secure bank loans, venture capital or sell shares in the company.

Without a good business plan you’ll not know if you have too much, too little, or if you’re focusing for efforts in the wrong place, with the wrong product, or at the wrong time.

[1] Gleuck WF and Jauch LR, : Strategic Management and Business Policy : (Ch1. pp. 5 -7) McGraw-Hill Intl. Edition London. 1998

This is the first of two articles assisting with getting the mind-set correct towards implementing a QMS. Watch this space for the next article.

6 Responses to “Quality Management Systems: Charting the Journey”

  1. Alan Smith Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Good day, You may want to add during the planning process, the identification of process owners and document a preliminary responsibility and linked resposibility matrix. (Later, an updated responsibility matrix can become evidence in the policy manual to demostrate top management buy in and it may be vital as acceptance by top management espescially where there is resistance) This should be discussed at top management with the CEO showing support and leadership. The responsibiliity matrix is very much a “live” document and must be updated when there are new or modified business processes in the organisation. Please dont forget to add COPS (Customer Orientated Proceses) regulatory, statutory and your own business processes on the responsibility matrix.

  2. christel Says:
    February 26th, 2009 at 9:19 am

    Hallo Alan
    Thank you for the comment. I fully agree. It is good news to see the depth to which some dedicated professionals go into to continually improve qualtiy within their organisation. Keep up the good work!
    Regards Christel

  3. Ross Garcin Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Good day Christel
    One of the important considerations, when defining and documenting the organizations strategic plan, is to analyze and define the risks associoated with the core business. A conclusive risk assessment, including all possible mitigations, is one of the important ‘tools’ that can be used to structure and focus on absloutes (non-negioables) when formulating a Strategic Plan matrix.

  4. christel Says:
    April 20th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    Hi Ross
    I fully agree. The issue is determining what is the core business and then from a quality point of view - what are the quality risks the organisation is facing? Thank you for the feedback. Regards Christel.

  5. Frank Says:
    May 8th, 2009 at 10:21 am

    Hi
    I have owned and managed my own businesses for many years and studied in different fields to prepare myself for running my own business successfully, like Financial acoounting & management, Labour law, Organisational Behaviour, Management etc.
    However when I sold up i started consulting and decided to go on a QMS Implementation and Auditing course.
    i was amazed, it was all basic business management practice, some of which i have been doing for years and some which i should have been doing.
    The QM Principles for one (which you have not mentioned here) form a fantastic base for any business venture. i am actually amazed that not more businesses are following this route of implementing good business practice. Your article hits it on the head. BUT how are you going to get this across to the top management. There is just not enough communication out there on the benefits of going this route. I always thought it was for export companies only.
    There is still a big perception out there that the QMS is factory or production related. I have just implemented a QMS and got ISO 9001 certification for two service oriented businesses (one call centre) covering everything that needs to be done. From strategy through to improvement.
    the question is how are you going to roll this sort of model out to the SMME trade - where it is most required.
    Sorry for long reply.
    Regards
    Frank

  6. christel Says:
    May 11th, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    Hi Frank
    Thank you for the comment. I agree: Quality is a way of life and actually applied 24 hours of the day by most people - we just do not realize it. Answering your question: ISO9001 cost money and most SMME’s are currently struggling just to becomne legally compliant and to comply with other must haves’ forced upon them by the principle contractor/government. Also with ISO9001 being costly the focus tends to move away from the longterm benefits of having such a system of which the most important one is: increased revenue. A simplified and cost-effective tool needs to be made available to obtain the buy-in of the SMME’s combined with a marketing campaign to sell the benefits. This is only my opinion? Regards Christel.

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