Quality Operating Procedures - Eliminating the term 'Quality'

[JaneB]

In Reply to Parent Post by piney

What I would like to do this time is to use a term that does not use the word "quality" in the description in an effort to get across the point that the procedures are "Company Operating Procedures."

Go for it. Why not just what you said: 'Company Operating Procedures'?

Or even shorter: Company Procedures? (I've yet to see any non-operating procedures you see).

Or think up a unique name. One company I know has the word ProActive in their company name - they call their system Be ProActive (which I like). And their procedures are just that: their procedures.

[JaneB]

Patricia, I'm with you, I often dislike the word 'Quality' being used as it's so commonly used to mean excellent or superior, when it isn't.

But I loathe the term 'SOP' - the acronym for one thing is awful and for another, the full name is 9 syllables which is too darned long, in my opinion!

[Yarik]

In Reply to Parent Post by JaneB

Yarik, I do agree the terms can be confusing.
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But a couple of things you said aren't correct.
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While the food itself may have met the requirements, the service did not - and service should also meet reasonable standards.
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Yes, you could well be right. But you need to explain to the fast food restaurant what a 'QMS' is and in terms that they can understand.
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OK - but don't tell them things that aren't so like your burger example!
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Well, I have to admit that my contrived example with restaurants was not the best possible. However, I did not ignore other aspects of the service - I just implied, for simplicity sake, that all those other aspects are adequate in both cases. Just tried to concentrate on one, most obvious aspect - the food. (Was very hungry when writing that example - a perfect customer for McDonalds around the corner! )

After all, I hope you are not saying that a fast-food restaurant has no chance to achieve high "ISO quality" (no matter how clear their facilities are, how polite their stuff is, etc.) just because there are people who never like burgers and fries.

My experience so far shows that people perceive the concept of quality very differently from how ISO defines it. It definitely takes some effort to make people "get it" and probably will take some effort to make people keep "getting it" afterwards.

By the way, I think my personal beef with the term "quality" may be in part caused by the nature of our company's business: we sell used (not necessarily refurbished) networking equipment; in fact sometimes customers order cards that are flat broken (to salvage some components, obviously). So it seems to be especially difficult for our people to grasp how a used product can ever be a high-quality product (and its sale - be a high-quality service). Even after a couple of weeks of immersing myself into "QMS World" I am still perplexed how are we going to overcome this.


Anyway, your point about comprehensive approach to understanding quality (about implied customer's requirements, expectations, etc.) is well taken. I agree that in some cases those implied requirements may be much more important than explicit ones.

In Reply to Parent Post by JaneB

I contend that everything in there is sheer good business sense, and I believe you (& your President) also will too when you understand it better.

I'm sure we will. With the boss - we are almost there.

The next challenge is going to be the concept of "process", I think.

[Patricia Ravanello]

In Reply to Parent Post by JaneB

Patricia, I'm with you, I often dislike the word 'Quality' being used as it's so commonly used to mean excellent or superior, when it isn't.

But I loathe the term 'SOP' - the acronym for one thing is awful and for another, the full name is 9 syllables which is too darned long, in my opinion!

I agree wholeheartedly...I think just "Procedures" is just fine". I'm all for brevity.

Patricia

[Patricia Ravanello]

In Reply to Parent Post by Yarik

After all, I hope you are not saying that a fast-food restaurant has no chance to achieve high "ISO quality" (no matter how clear their facilities are, how polite their stuff is, etc.) just because there are people who never like burgers and fries.

Hi Yarik,

I hope that you don't think that "ISO Quality " = "High Quality"...it doesn't.

As I said earlier, ISO is about stability, predicabitliy and consistency of controlled processes. The "customer-defined" product may not need to be "high quality" (as in your company). In your case, as in all others, so-called "ISO Quality" is defined by conistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations (be it product, timing, service, delivery, warranty, etc.).

Are you meeting and/or exceeding your objectives of effectiveness and efficiency for product, timing, service, delivery and warranty? That's what you need to focus your organization's attention on...drop the "Q" word. It's ambiguous and confusing.

Patricia

[Helmut Jilling]

In Reply to Parent Post by Yarik

Hello Piney,

I'm very far from being an expert in this area (I've just started to work on a QMS for our small business from scratch, and we are not even aiming at certification yet). But I was pondering the same idea all the time lately. In fact, I am seriously considering elimination of the word "quality" wherever possible. And here is why:

Our company does not seem to be a case where the concept of "quality" is in a "ghetto", so my reasons are different. The main reason to avoid this term is that ISO's definition of this concept appears to be very controversial - somewhat out of sync with what regular people perceive as "quality". As a result, all the lingo related to QMS becomes extremely confusing for regular people.

Perhaps, the following simple example would help to convey my concern: let's take a typical fast-food restaurant and a typical upscale restaurant.

• First, I am sure that most of the people unfamiliar with ISO's definition of "quality" would easily agree with a statement that the quality of food in the former is always much lower than in the latter, and that the fast-food restaurant always produces low quality meals. However, according to ISO's definition of "quality", the situation may be exactly opposite. ISO defines "quality" as degree of conformance of a product to the requirements determined for it. So, for example, a customer who ORDERED a burger and then got a well-cooked, fresh burger just cannot complain about low quality of the service he/she just received! According to ISO the customer must have been satisfied, right?

• Now, let's take a look at the other side of the "fence"... Let's say I come to some fast-food restaurant and suggest to implement a QMS. The immediate reaction from everyone (including management) is like "No way! It is ridiculous to try to make our small restaurant compete with all those HIGH-QUALITY upscale restaurants downtown!"

I hope you get the idea...

As far as I can see, people are extremely resistant to accept ISO's definition of "quality"! In my case, I'm still struggling with explaining all this to our President, who is much more educated, smart and open-minded than most of the people I know. Explaining this to the clerks in our company appears to be a hopeless task.

So, I am also wondering what do professionals think abou adequacy of the term "quality" in ISO? Did ISO themselves manage to produce a high-quality term here? How reasonable is the idea of dropping this term from the vocabulary wherever possible? Obviously many people do it here and there, but how common is this approach?

FWIW, the book that I am reading right now - Craig Cochran's "ISO 9000 In Plain English" - also insists on dropping the word "quality", but the author seems to have slightly different reasoning for that...

I guess, I've raised more questions than I answered. Still, this issue bothers me quite a lot, so I could not resist and jumped in.

Best regards,
Yarik.

Wow, Yarik...you make some good points, and I agree with some of your thinking...but, you are WAY overthinking this. This much thinking and discussing just about what the procedures should be called... it's not necessary.

Since you said you are just starting, may I recommend start where the standard starts. Cl 4.1 says to think about your processes. Identify them, lay them out, define the details...

Once you are settled on the processes, and you have described them, then simply make a controlling document (procedure) for each process. If you have a purchasing process, make a procedure for that Purchasing process that describes whatever you want to say about doing Purchasing well.

Then, write specific work instructions for only those areas where you really need to say more.

Keep it simple, and slowly work your way to completion. That is much more important that what you call proceudres or work instructions.

Good luck.

[Yarik]

Hi Patricia,

In Reply to Parent Post by Patricia Ravanello

I hope that you don't think that "ISO Quality " = "High Quality"...it doesn't.

I did not say that "ISO quality" is equivalent to "high quality" (whatever you mean by equivalence).

All I was saying is that

• "ISO quality" (as a metric of how well does organization serve its customers) can be low, high, and everything in between. At least, that is what I think ISO 9000:2005 says (see 3.1.1 NOTE 1). I took the liberty to use adjectives "low" and "high" (instead of "poor" and "excellent" suggested by the standard), but I do not think that this deviation changes anything.

• The concept of "low/med/high poor/good/excellent ISO quality" (in the ISO's model of the world) is difficult for people to grasp because it is not what they usually perceive as "low/med/high poor/good/excellent quality" in the real world.

In Reply to Parent Post by Patricia Ravanello

The "customer-defined" product may not need to be "high quality" (as in your company). In your case, as in all others, so-called "ISO Quality" is defined by conistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations (be it product, timing, service, delivery, warranty, etc.).

Well, it does not have to be "high-quality" in common sense, but it should be "high-quality" in "ISO sense", right? As far as I understand ISO's definition of quality and other concepts, the the whole point of a QMS is to ensure that the organization consistently delivers products that are of high "ISO quality".

If "ISO quality" means "degree to which a set of inherent characteristics [of a product delivered to a customer] fulfils requirements [defined for the product by the customer, explicitly and implicitly]", and organization delivers a product with high degree of such fulfilment, isn't the "ISO quality" of such product high/excellent by definition? Now, replace "ISO quality" with just "quality" in all this, and try to explain all this to people who do not understand how a burger or a used electronic gadgets can be a high-quality product. Good luck!

Or are you saying that requirements and expectations of every visitor of a fast-food restaurant are always the same as requirements and expectations of every visitor of an upscale restaurant, and therefore the quality (ISO or not ISO) of the product/service delivered by a fast-food restaurant is doomed to be low, no matter how hard they try? I guess that's exactly what regular (ISO-unaware) people world say, and that's exactly the problem I was talking about: a serious mismatch between well defined concept of "ISO quality" and ambiguity of the word "quality" in common use.

Of course, McDonald's can never, ever deliver a high-quality product (ISO or not ISO) to a customer who walks in and tries to order NY steak (medium/rare!), well-steamed veggies, and a glass of 2002 merlot from XYZ vinery (and also expects to be seated in a secluded booth on a comfy sofa). But then again, it's not a McDonald's customer to begin with, right? Fortunately (for McDonald's and of it ilk) there are crowds and crowds of customers who walk in to order burger + fries + coke (no ice!) and can be fully satisfied - so long as the burger is fresh, fries are not oversalted, coke does not have ice in it (and the wait time is short, and the premises are clean, etc. etc.). IMHO, that means that "ISO quality" of McDonald's product/service can be high (and therefore QMS can be useful for McDonald's too). I hope you can agree with that. But that's exactly what is difficult to explain to a regular human being while using just the word "quality".

I think I do understand the meaning and purpose of QMS very well. All I'm saying is that the use of word "quality" in QMS documentation does not serve that purpose very well. (I see some great irony in that: according to the ISO's own definition of quality, the term "quality" itself - as one of the products/components delivered by ISO - just does not seem to have a very high quality. )

Therefore, my feeling is that the less frequently the word "quality" is used in QMS documentation (or in any business documentation in general), the better. At least for some organizations. It's better to use less controversial terms (for instance, "customer satisfaction", "requirements fulfillment", etc.) instead.

[Yarik]

In Reply to Parent Post by Helmut Jilling

Wow, Yarik...you make some good points, and I agree with some of your thinking...but, you are WAY overthinking this. This much thinking and discussing just about what the procedures should be called... it's not necessary.

Well, I just wanted to point out yet another reason why people might want to avoid using the word "quality" in QMS documentation in general (and in procedure/process names in particular).

But I agree that my musings have obviously strayed the original discussion. For that I apologize.

Best regards,
Yarik.