Measurable Targets and Objectives - Envelope Printing Company

Greetings All,

Recently my ISO 9001 consultant has come to me a told me out of the 9 departments we currently have at the Company, we are to show 9 measurable targets/objectives. Yes, 9!


We are an Envelope Manufacturing Company, and the 9 departments for the measurable targets/objectives are:

1. Production
2. Finance
3. Customer Services
4. Overprint
5. Warehouse
6. Transport
7. Sales
8. Reprographics
9. Planning

He has told me we must show the "Measurement of Customer Satisfaction". Ok, well i understand that one, as the task above is excluded from the Targets/Objectives. But, from all the 9 departments i can only come up with these 4 ideas:

• Production - Correction action times against turnaround times. QRA process reduction.
• Customer Services - Customers orders against Customer complaints to be shown as a percentage.
• Transport - Estimated delivery dateon order against actual Delivery date.
• Reprographics - Proof turnaround times.

Am i thinking along the right lines here, or am i miles off? Please help me, i could do with a few examples if possible as being an Envelope Company isnt the easiest of businesses, along with the fact i haven't been working here very long!

Thank you all, and i look forward to your help and assistance!

Re: Measurable Targets/Objectives

Recently my ISO 9001 consultant has come to me a told me out of the 9 departments we currently have at the Company, we are to show 9 measurable targets/objectives. Yes, 9!

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You do need to show measurables tagets/objectives but nowhere can I find you need to do it for every department. We have 5 Departments and have at this point 2 objectives which are listed on our Policy statement.

1-Manufacturing-maintain the scrap at 1.5% or less
2-Customer Service-100% OTD.

They don't need to be difficult; just something that you believe to be attainable.

He has told me we must show the "Measurement of Customer Satisfaction". Ok, well i understand that one, as the task above is excluded from the Targets/Objectives. But, from all the 9 departments i can only come up with these 4 ideas:

• Production - Correction action times against turnaround times. QRA process reduction.
• Customer Services - Customers orders against Customer complaints to be shown as a percentage.
• Transport - Estimated delivery dateon order against actual Delivery date.
• Reprographics - Proof turnaround times.

Am i thinking along the right lines here, or am i miles off? Please help me, i could do with a few examples if possible as being an Envelope Company isnt the easiest of businesses, along with the fact i haven't been working here very long!

Click to expand...

Measurement of Customer Satisfaction is always a good one. I believe you're on the right track but remember that you need to set a target on each one. Good luck

Re: Measurable Targets/Objectives

Is your company using a process approach? My guess is that your consultant sees 9 processes and therefore wants to see 9 indicators that will show whether or not these processes are performing well.

27. What is a process?

Any activity or operation, which receives inputs and converts them to outputs, can be considered as a process. Almost all activities and operations involved in generating a product or providing a service are processes.

For organizations to function, they have to define and manage numerous inter-linked processes. Often the output from one process will directly form the input into the next process. The systematic identification and management of the various processes employed within an organization, and particularly the interactions between such processes, may be referred to as the ‘process approach’ to management.

For further information, refer to the paper Guidance on the Concept and Use of the Process Approach, available from www.iso.org/tc176/sc2.

28. What is the "process approach"?

The "process approach" is a way of obtaining a desired result, by managing activities and related resources as a process. The "process approach" is a key element of the ISO 9000 standards. For further guidance, please refer to the ISO 9000 Introduction and Support Package module: Guidance on the Concept and Use of the Process Approach for management systems.

Here is the post I took this information from: ISO 9001 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's)

Re: Measurable Targets/Objectives

he is also a consultant and not an auditor. you do not have to what he says if doesn't make sense. My experience with bad consultants (please note there are a lot of very goods one here at the cove) is that they tend to over prepare you for the registration audit as their success depends on your passing. Not a bad strategy form their perspective I suppose, but htey don't have to maintain the system once you are registered...

There is no requirement to have the same number of targets/objectives as you have departments. My suggestion would be to start learning how to push back now. Only my Mother could away with "because I said so"...

Re: Measurable Targets/Objectives

QEC1989 said:

Hmmm...let's see if there's as much outrage against your comments on 'consultants' as there were against mine recently.

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well I did specify that I was talking about bad consultants. I didn't say that all bad consultants would do this, nor did I say that any consultant that suggests this is necessarily a bad consultant...so we shall see.

Re: Measurable Targets and Objectives

I think from our experience we may categorize consultants as "good" "not-so-good" "so-so" or even "bad" just as we may find similar situation among other professionals.

Coming to laying down Quality Objectives, the standard (ISO 9001) states

"..ensure that quality objectives...are established at relevant functions and levels within the organization".

What the 'relevant' functions are can be determined from Quality Policy (cl. 5.3) that

"provides a framework for ...quality objectives". And the Policy is supposed to be "appropriate to the purpose of organization", "commitment to comply with the requirements and continually improve..."

There is thus no requirement to set Q Objects for ALL functions/departments. Only for what is relevant as defined by the standard.

Re: Measurable Targets and Objectives

My guess is that he wants to see 9 objectives because you have 9 departments - which shows a certain level of ignorance on his part maybe.

Just ask yourself what your organisation is trying to do, mainly in terms of what its customers wants (as we are talking 'quality' here I guess), then ask yourself what internal processes exist to support these goals - think outside of the departmental framework - then consider how you may measure this, and what standard of performance would be 'acceptable', finally consider how each process contributes to these measures.

A classic example would be on time delivery - you can measure this at the business level by comparing customer request date to actual delivery date. But to achieve this the 'product' has to pass through various processes/departments, so clearly there is a time element to each of these stages. Measuring the time element at each discrete process/department/stage may be beneficial in being able to monitor and control performance at the departmental level in relation to this overall business objective of on time delivery, it may also serve well in identifying areas where there are bottlenecks or other hold ups.