Putting Quality Management Together - Getting People to see Quality as a System

[RCBeyette]

In Reply to Parent Post by kgott

Perhaps you might like to try a slighly different approach. Try thinking and talking in terms of a management system and processes instead of procedures, work instructions etc.

I'd like to expand upon this...

Drop terms such as ISO and OHSAS and QMS and EMS and so on. Promote and advocate your organization's Business Management System. This is WHAT we do. This is HOW we do it. This is WHY we do it.

Too often I have seen organization's address ISO requirements in one system and have "other" requirements in another system. Why is this? What purpose does this serve? Why not simply have one system with one language with one common set of tools?

With my previous organization, we developed our Business Management System that incorporated the requirements of all Stakeholders - this included our parent company's needs, external certification requirements, our internal teams' necessities, etc.. Sure, we weren't perfect, but there was a sense of ownership from everyone that this was OUR system, developed BY us, FOR us.

Auditors - for ISO purposes and from our parent company - would come in and were continually impressed with the awareness and ownership that everyone had, from the person who swept the floor up to senior management. In fact, the only failing we had was on understanding terms...we were one of the lowest scoring plants when it came to understanding what 5S was, yet we had one of the cleanest, most organized locations. We didn't preach 5S...we integrated the concepts into our daily routine. Think about it - at home, you put the forks back in the same spot in your utensil drawer. You don't call it 5S - you do it because it makes sense.

This was the approach we took with our Business Management System and the tools that supported it.

[somashekar]

In Reply to Parent Post by markl368

We've had plenty of quality awareness training in our organization and we're pretty good at meeting stated requirements, but I've been struggling with getting people to see quality as a system instead of a set of individual requirements. It can sometimes be like working with ISO/GMP trained robots. Is there anything you can suggest that helps train people in thinking systematically? Most of the training courses I've looked at have simply been more of the same review of standards and requirements.

I would invite you to see THIS thread and the contents / attachments in several of the posts in them.
.... and THIS as well ~~~

[kgott]

RC;s comments are very valid. Having worked in OH&S for many years and after having reponsibility for ISO 14001 for a number of years I came to the view she has expressed. I whole heartedly agree and I would urge all readers to see things in this globalistic way.

[sstemper]

I agree - we need to integrate quality into the normal routine. My pet peeve is to hear someone say they do something because "... ISO requires it ...".
I've been successful in the past using a "grassroots" approach. As suggested above, I had the employees write/maintain their own procedures - when more than one performed the same procedure, all of them got together to write it. It empowered them, got them to come up with a consistent process by learning the best method from each other, and it provided the easiest buy-in for the final release.
I've also trained as many employees as possible, at all levels of the organization, to be internal auditors. In one company I had 1/3 of the staff trained as auditors. I found that it had a self-sustaining effect - the trained auditors were watching the processes, even when they weren't performing audits. . . with knowledge comes responsibility!

[lynfern]

There is a very good question. So I am also very concern on it.

In some of country, the Quality Management is all about Quality Personnel's issue, they cannot pay any attention on the quality other than on his title cover: project, product, manufacture, logistic, HR, finance, and etc.

So I want to kick off a Quality Improvement Program in company range to make people treat quality as a system and raise staff quality awareness.

Is there anybody has a good plan on it? would you like help me?