Dear all,
Has anyone experience in building up a global quality management system (starting point: zero) within a global acting company group, bringing a group of legal manufacturer sites under one QMS umbrella.
What are your experiences?
What are pitfalls?
what are do's and dont's?
Thank you in advance!
BR Aphel
Aphel,
Scope the system, determine the stakeholders and synthesize the organization’s global purpose or mission.
My experience taught me to seek understanding of job titles and their roles, authorities and responsibilities. Chances are that these are not yet standardized. Then pay attention the architecture of the global management system so you avoid creating a confusing hairball of system docs.
Focus on what each of the orgs already do to convert needs into cash. Do not forget service design.
Determine the processes (the
work of teams not procedures) that are essential to the success of the organization, it’s customers and other stakeholders (to fulfill the mission). Choose your process owners carefully, with top management agreement, so you have consensus on how the organization already operates as a system and people best able to represent its processes.
At this point you will start to see the vital interactions between functions and processes at a high level.
Then, with a tool of your choice - mine was deployment flowcharting - work alongside each of your process owners to capture their process, it’s objectives, the team players, the inputs, it’s planning, execution, exchanges of information (aka meetings), interactions and outputs. Focus on what is done upfront of each process to understand and eliminate risks to prevent failures to fulfill requirements.
Share the common processes that serve the operating companies.
Flowcharted documented procedures may be less of a translation burden (fewer words all of which are well chosen) a rigorous review tool and pay particular concern to reconcile the comments from the process team members.
Where work processes are partly or wholly new organize the training and other resources necessary to make them real.
Audit to verify conformity and effectiveness with trained system and process auditors drawn from the operating companies (not the we know best department!)?
Celebrate your successes and show through your actions that your listened carefully to feedback.
Good luck,
John
PS: Here at the Cove we’d be interested in learning how you address compliance across all jurisdictions.
