ISO 9001 Help - New Quality Manager - Upper Management Support Issues

[RCH2016]

Yes, if nobody wants to talk about it, everybody should. Air dirty laundry behind closed doors.

 

[John Broomfield]

“How can I get employees that have been working for this company for 10+ years on board with the program? I already mentioned buying lunch or something to incentivize, but the three senior-most managers, the top naysayers, are not on board as they already buy lunch for each other on a daily basis and eat together.“

If your company is still in business after 10+ years then it has a system for converting customer needs into cash in the bank.

Work with a top manager who has knowledge of the way the company does this to understand and map out this system as it is. Deployment flowcharting is the tool to use in understanding the interactions between your company, its customers, your suppliers, the regulators (four columns). Describe simply the work your company does to understand customer needs, translate needs into requirements (design), select suppliers who provide materials and services, add value to those inputs, deliver and bill for services and products.

Show respect for the system and stop dissing it by saying “no quality system”; it may not be the way you want it to be but to bring about change you must listen well.

Pretty soon you'll have determined the processes that must be included in the management system for it to provide confidence that requirements will be fulfilled. Then ask around to find out who the experts are in these processes and work with each of them to analyze the inputs, who does what to prevent problems, add value and verify conformity of outputs (look for SIPOC here). Ask the process owners also identify the other processes with which their process interacts. You could use deployment flowcharts for this too. Link forms and instructions to these flowcharted procedures.

Ask the process owners to walk the flowcharts up and down the process team members so they can make sure it accurate. Ask them to make it bleed and respect their comments by using them or reconciling them with the commentor.

You should then be well on the way to earning the respect of your colleagues, support if top management, as together you develop the management system by going with the grain.

Good luck,

John

 

[Scanton]

I agree with John Broomfield 100%

Your starting point will be to assess how much of the standard your company already adheres too, and I would expect you will find much of it is already covered. After all, ISO9001 is generally regarded as collection of best practices which many business find organically without the dictation of a standard, because they work.

I had the absolute privilege to work with a Doctor (of Physics) who was head of technology and one of his responsibilities was the introduction of new technology to manufacturing. Now his approach (which surprised me as a young naive middle manager, as we should be telling people what to do, we are managers after all) was to engaged the people who did the job in the project before any consideration was given to anything technical to find out what they did and why they did it. He would then determine if the new technology actually needed introducing (in some instance there would be no benefit) and if it did, would involve the people who would be working with it at every step of the project, and that is why he was the only person in European manufacturing who’s projects worked first time, every time.

I know I went off track a little, however the moral of the story is get the people who do the job involved in what you are doing from the start because what they do clearly matters to the business, don’t dictate what they have to do to meet the standard, highlight what they are already doing that meets the standard and stick with the mantra that ISO9001 is just a collection of best practices of which you are already doing X, Y & Z because it works and not because the standard says so. If you have them on board, plugging the gaps from that point should be much easier.

Good luck and welcome to the cove

 

[Big Jim]

I agree with John Broomfield 100%

Your starting point will be to assess how much of the standard your company already adheres too, and I would expect you will find much of it is already covered. After all, ISO9001 is generally regarded as collection of best practices which many business find organically without the dictation of a standard, because they work.

I had the absolute privilege to work with a Doctor (of Physics) who was head of technology and one of his responsibilities was the introduction of new technology to manufacturing. Now his approach (which surprised me as a young naive middle manager, as we should be telling people what to do, we are managers after all) was to engaged the people who did the job in the project before any consideration was given to anything technical to find out what they did and why they did it. He would then determine if the new technology actually needed introducing (in some instance there would be no benefit) and if it did, would involve the people who would be working with it at every step of the project, and that is why he was the only person in European manufacturing who’s projects worked first time, every time.

I know I went off track a little, however the moral of the story is get the people who do the job involved in what you are doing from the start because what they do clearly matters to the business, don’t dictate what they have to do to meet the standard, highlight what they are already doing that meets the standard and stick with the mantra that ISO9001 is just a collection of best practices of which you are already doing X, Y & Z because it works and not because the standard says so. If you have them on board, plugging the gaps from that point should be much easier.

Good luck and welcome to the cove

This reminds me of a comment made by one of the guest speakers while I was in business school. I should give him credit, but I cannot remember his name.

He said that the expert about any job is the person doing the job, and as soon as you move three feet away you are no longer the expert.

His point was to make sure you engage those doing the job and learn from them and pay attention to what they know. It is MUCH more effective than trying to totally be a top down manager.

This is part of why a participative management style is so effective.