Quality Management System comparison

[wdevos]

Hi, our company is looking into the possibility to introduce a quality management system + quality label/certificate. We would like to do a SWOT-analysis on the different existing mgmt systems (ISO9001, EFQM, IQRS, ...).

Is anyone having interesting information and/or material on this that he/she is willing to share?

Many thanks!

[Geoff Withnell]

Originally Posted by wdevos

Hi, our company is looking into the possibility to introduce a quality management system + quality label/certificate. We would like to do a SWOT-analysis on the different existing mgmt systems (ISO9001, EFQM, IQRS, ...).

Is anyone having interesting information and/or material on this that he/she is willing to share?

Many thanks!

My initial response is to question Why your company wants a quality management system? And why do you want a certificate? In my not very humble opinion, the similarities between the various qms standards far exceeds the differences. My almost invariable advice to those undertaking the process of establishing a qms is to determine the quality needs of your organization, and using whatever standard is most convenient as a guide, design the qms to meet your organizations quality needs. Then, if customers require certification to a specific standard, do a gap analysis against that standard. If you know going in that your customers will expect a standard, that would be the one to use as a guide. But in my experience, Quality Management Systems set to meet Standard XXXXX almost always fail, while Quality Management Systems set up to give management the ability to set and direct the quality course of the company, usually succeed.

Geoff Withnell

[Caster]

Originally Posted by Geoff Withnell

My initial response is to question Why your company wants a quality management system? Geoff Withnell

And to get even more radical, the standards you mentioned are ISO 9000 based which can had Military Inspection standards as a parent. They are trying to move from inspection oriented prescription systems but still have deep roots in that way of thinking.

If you are starting from scratch, why not look at Toyota or Tom Peters or Ricardo Semler, or Captain Bob for a business system which also happens to include quality amongst other things?

It may help your company and suppliers than just another ISO plus unique customer requirements system.

[wdevos]

Thanks for your comments!

Our company has set a mission to start offering its know-how to external customers (we are an engineering office in the area of high voltage electrical installation projects and up till now only produced studies and project for the internal network).

So the first question that we are willing to answer is, would we need a certificate? Do customers in our business want to see our certificate?
This question will be answered by doing market studies.

But if so, and if they do not impose one in particular, what are advantages/disadvantages of what is available. What could be extra market possibilities, what is the cost of introduction compared to the potential gains, etc...

[jcostach]

To continue with this topic, I am doing Msc business Performance Management's thesis . It is abou Performance Prism as a new management and measurement tool for CSR, and my main hypothesis is that Performance Prism works better for SMEs applying CSR than other frameworks, such as Baldrige, EFQM and Balanced Scorecard.

The thing is that I can't find many consistent disadvantages of EFQM. Does any of you have some knowledge or evidence about disadvantages of EFQM?

Thanks

Joan