Hello Everyone,

Our company is STRUGGLING big time with setting objectives and measurable goals. Does anyone know if top management (ie owners') objectives can be financial objectives or do they need to be more "quality based" objectives- ie more lofty customer satisfaction goals, etc.?

Right now our two owners likely have objectives but they keep them in their heads! That means, we don't know how to define departmental level goals and objectives and we don't know what to measure, etc. Doesn't exactly work! Okay, not entirely true, we DO have written objectives from top management but they are completely outdated and don't work for the organization. We need ones that MEAN something and that are easily measured. We are a small company and do not have advanced statistical tools at our fingertips. We don't even have a good ERP system.

We are finding this all a humungous challenge. What sort of objectives should top management provide? How do we measure our performance against these objectives?

ANY information or help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Donna Denny

Hiya and welcome :bigwave:

I won't softsoap on the response, that's for the less than bold to do.

I would believe that if you have a Quality System the objectives should be related to Quality. Yeah, that sounds right!

There's nothing wrong with business objectives, but the name of the game is "Quality".

Now if you can tie the financial to some Q stuff it's Win-Win.

There has to be something you can do better, if not then there is no real reason to attend the QMS Dance because it's through the achievement of objectives that improvement is shown.

Hei Donna,
Welcome to the Cove.
I see by your profile that you are the Quality Manager and your company has 30 employees.
Do you have a formalized and defined QMS in place?
What do you manufacture and/or service?
Wallace.

Take a look at http://www.hanford.gov/safety/vpp/busobj2.htm

Focus on coming up with the measures first, then the objectives. If you are using SPC, your objectives are easy - if the process is "out of control" get it in control. If it is "in control" (stable) decide if the process is okay as is or needs improvement. If okay as is, your goal is to maintain stability on the control chart, generate no trends in the wrong direction. If your goal is improvement, your goal is to generate a significant improving trend on the control chart.

Hello Everyone,

Our company is STRUGGLING big time with setting objectives and measurable goals. Does anyone know if top management (ie owners') objectives can be financial objectives or do they need to be more "quality based" objectives- ie more lofty customer satisfaction goals, etc.?

Right now our two owners likely have objectives but they keep them in their heads! That means, we don't know how to define departmental level goals and objectives and we don't know what to measure, etc. Doesn't exactly work! Okay, not entirely true, we DO have written objectives from top management but they are completely outdated and don't work for the organization. We need ones that MEAN something and that are easily measured. We are a small company and do not have advanced statistical tools at our fingertips. We don't even have a good ERP system.

We are finding this all a humungous challenge. What sort of objectives should top management provide? How do we measure our performance against these objectives?

ANY information or help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Donna Denny


Donna

You can estalblish your quality objectives in any form you want but the most important issue is that there must be measurable and should form part of your management review process according to the requirements of the standard. You can refer to these quality objectives as business objectives (profit, production levels, budgeted sales, scrap produced,etc) if you so wish. The number of objectives you estalblish is entirely up to you. I hope this helps, a word of caution, yourself and your management must not come with a few number of quality/business objectives just satisfy the minimium requirements of the standard.

Donna,

Welcome to The Cove!

Have you considered relating your objectives to your quality policy?

For example:
Quality policy - Provide customers with defect free widgets on time.
Objective # 1 - Defect rate not to exceed more than 1 defect out of 10,000 widgets for FY 2005.
Objective # 2 - On-time delivery not to be less than 98.5% for FY 2005.

Like you mentioned already, the bosses have some objectives in mind already. Your job is to have them relate those your objectives to your organization's quality initiatives.

We wish you success.

Jaime

Welcome - For the big bosses

How about reducing the cost of poor quality to our customers

OR

Providing the financial and personnel resources to maintain a robust quality system

OR

Responding to any customer quality concerns in a manner that shows top management commitment and resolution

It is fairly easy to tie in management objectives to the quality system.

Good luck

Hi Guys!

I'm new here and I was looking for a related topic to post my question - so far this is the closest I've found so this is a bit off topic:

Clause 5.1 Management Commitment
Question: Should top management include the CEO of your company? Or will the Chief Information Security Officer and his group will do?

If the CEO should be included in top management, does it mean that he needs to review and approve the QMS/QMS Manual as well?

Hope to hear from you. Thanks!

Hi Guys!

I'm new here and I was looking for a related topic to post my question - so far this is the closest I've found so this is a bit off topic:

Clause 5.1 Management Commitment
Question: Should top management include the CEO of your company? Or will the Chief Information Security Officer and his group will do?

If the CEO should be included in top management, does it mean that he needs to review and approve the QMS/QMS Manual as well?

Hope to hear from you. Thanks!

Top = highest point. Because the existence of the QMS is at the behest of the "top" manager, and the quality manual, among other things, delegates responsibility and authority that emanate from the "top" level of management, not including the CEO in these things shouldn't be considered acceptable.

We are finding this all a humungous challenge. What sort of objectives should top management provide? How do we measure our performance against these objectives?

ANY information or help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Donna Denny

Craig Cochran, contributor here on the Cove and Author, wrote an article titled, "Using Quality Objectives to Drive Strategic Performance" for Quality Digest magazine. In the article he describes the process of creating quality objectives. It was very helpful to me. Here's the link:
http://www.qualitydigest.com/nov00/html/objectives.html