Thanks to manix for the reply. I will come back with some further thoughts. Below are some ideas for the principles that have come from some learned people in the Chartered Quality Institute in the UK. Thoughts?
'1. Leadership
Effective leadership is essential for a sustainable business. Organisation’s top management should:
• participate in and commit to quality, business improvement and the organisation’s customers and other stakeholders
• provide leadership, strategy and resources to achieve the organisations goals, objectives and targets
• regularly review the organisation’s management system and performance against its objectives
• demonstrate their commitment to the organisation’s values, strategies and policies throughout all of their actions.
2. Organisation values
A clear set of organisation values is an essential requirement for a sustainable business and an organisation’s top management should establish values, which include, among other issues, how the organisation values quality, innovation, continual improvement, and cares about its stakeholder’s needs and aspirations which includes its customers, employees, suppliers and society in general.
3. Organisation control, guidance and nurture
An organisation’s goals and objectives are achieved through effective leadership, adequate resourcing, an effective and efficient management system and competent and committed people. In the longer term, these actions and resulting behaviours lead to a positive organisation culture in which the values of the organisation are naturally shared across the workforce. An organisation should:
• use its; values, top management leadership as an example, management system and competency base to establish a sound organisation internal climate to control, guide and nurture its business processes
• identify its total requirement for competence, to be maintained internally or accessed externally via approved suppliers
• meet existing and projected future competence requirements by effective recruitment and development of people to occupy posts and roles
• monitor proactively and reactively through the analysis of incidents, behaviour, attitude and level of satisfaction of people.
4. The management of risk
Understanding risk and using this understanding, allocate resources to manage risk to deliver to the sustainable delivery of the expected quality of products and services. An organisation should:
• identify the key sources of potential harm to its survival, public profile and its ability to deliver quality results to its customers and other stakeholders and assess the associated risks
• prioritise risk on the basis of the combination of severity of consequence and the likelihood of occurrence
• manage significant risks that pose an unacceptable threat to the organisation so that they are either avoided, transferred, controlled or the consequence is mitigated by fully developed and tested contingency arrangements.
5. Customers and other stakeholders
Satisfied and loyal customers are essential for a sustainable organisation. Quality is a need and aspiration that lies within the eye of the stakeholders who exercise their influence and power on the behavior of the organisation. In general it is the customers who are the most influential and powerful although other stakeholders such as regulators, banks and insurers etc can cause an organisation to quickly cease to exist. As a priority organisations should:
• ensure that customers and significant stakeholders’ needs and aspirations are accurately analyzed and understood with respect to the organisation’s operations
• measure customer and stakeholders’ satisfaction
• use customer and stakeholders’ feedback to improve products, services and organisation operations by seeking to optimally balance relevant stakeholder needs and aspirations.
6. Management System
The sustainable delivery of consistent and reliable high performance to stakeholders requires the implementation and maintenance of an effective and efficient management system and a suitable and sufficient competence base. The management system should manage the organisation’s competence and, by encouraging the right behaviors, promote a positive organisation culture in the longer term. An organisation should carefully design its management system in order to:
• control and guide the organisation’s processes in order to deliver its vision, goals, objectives and targets though a ‘plan, do , check and act’ approach applied at all levels of the organisation from top management down to individual task level
• continually improve all aspects of the organisation’s performance
• manage risk within the totality of the organisation, including projects and relationships with stakeholders
• consistently deliver high quality products and services to customers within budget, on time and optimally satisfying the needs and aspirations of stakeholders
• promote a positive evolving organisation culture
• address all impacts of its activities, e.g. quality, health and safety, environmental, knowledge, data, etc through a single integrated structure, as appropriate.
7. Delivering quality results through commitment, ownership and planning
Quality does not happen by accident. It is the result of determining the appropriate levels of product or service quality, establishing quality acceptance criteria and planning to meet these criteria. Top management should demonstrate a commitment to quality management and organisations should:
• design and build quality into their structure and processes that deliver or support
products and services or act as a contingency if these fail or underperform.
• encourage process owners and people to take responsibility and champion planning and delivering of quality to the customer
• ensure that sufficient resources are available to plan and deliver the predetermined levels of product or service quality.
8. The process approach to delivering results
An organisation’s products and services are most efficiently and effectively delivered to customers through primary business processes, those clearly identifiable chains of recurrent activities with a planned outcome that extend across an organisation and through which inputs are transformed into outputs, of a defined quality, cost and delivery schedule, for the organisation’s customers. Establishing effective primary business processes is an essential requirement for a sustainable business and an organisation should:
• ensure that there is a clear link between the organisation’s purpose and its primary business processes
• design its primary and supporting business processes from a customer and stakeholder perspective
• provide effective visibility of its primary and supporting business processes
• ensure that process personnel have been trained and/or inducted in the requirements of these primary and supporting business processes
• establish the necessary resources to manage and operate these primary and supporting business processes.
When designing its business processes, products and services, an organisation should consider the total lifecycles and the need to sustain and make best use of the earth’s resources in the short and longer term.
9. Monitoring, measurement and data analysis
Monitoring, measurement and data analysis is necessary to control, confirm and analyse performance of the organisation’s and contracted management systems, processes, products and services and to take corrective actions, preventive actions and initiate changes to continually improve. An organisation should monitor proactively (via audits, inspections etc) and reactively (via accidents, incidents, complaints, near miss reporting and analysis) what is important to:
• customers
• staff
• other stakeholders
• process owners.
The organisation’s top management and process owners should analyse and measure in order to understand their structures and business processes and improve performance. The monitoring arrangements should form a hierarchy of actions that efficiently and effectively make the best use of the monitoring resource and should be periodically adjusted via management review To promote continual improvement of systems and processes. A positive organisational climate will encourage people at all levels to behave in a way that promotes quality via the identification of opportunities to improve processes that deliver products and services, identify risks and reduces failure and reduce waste. An organisation should:
• encourage people at every level of the organisation to generate creative ideas and recognise individuals who generate them
• maintain processes to review, evaluate, prioritize, select, develop and implement ideas that have been created
• undertake regular reviews and assessments of business processes to confirm that they continue to deliver the intended results, the management system is appropriate and being complied with, and to identify further opportunities to prevent failure, improve performance, reduce waste and reduce risk.
10. Problem solving and decision-making
An effective and evidence informed method of identifying the root cause of problems and developing solutions that not only provide a cost effective resolution of the issue, but also considers the associated risks. An organisation should:
• develop the competencies to enable root cause analysis, risk assessment and risk informed decision-making to be conducted at every level of the organisation
• maintain processes to establish the root cause of problems; develop and implement solutions and share both the problems and solutions across the organisation.
Fundamental to effective management and a positive organizational climate is the principle of a just approach when encountering and dealing with problems, i.e. question why and how the management system allowed a problem to occur instead of allocating blame to an individual or individuals when the causes are human error. However, where individuals have clearly violated the management system for selfish reasons they should be subject to disciplinary processes compliant with human resource legislation.
11. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
The quality of an organisation’s products and services may be restricted by the weakest link in its supply chain. The satisfactory delivery of products and services by an organisation’s suppliers and partners is an essential requirement for a sustainable business. An organisation should:
• ensure that supplier processes integrate harmoniously with the organisation’s processes
• ensure that its customers’ requirements are accurately cascaded to all levels of its supply chain
• identify and manage any significant risks to the accurate delivery of products and services within the supply chain
• accept that both the organisation and its suppliers should benefit equitably from the relationship.'
'1. Leadership
Effective leadership is essential for a sustainable business. Organisation’s top management should:
• participate in and commit to quality, business improvement and the organisation’s customers and other stakeholders
• provide leadership, strategy and resources to achieve the organisations goals, objectives and targets
• regularly review the organisation’s management system and performance against its objectives
• demonstrate their commitment to the organisation’s values, strategies and policies throughout all of their actions.
2. Organisation values
A clear set of organisation values is an essential requirement for a sustainable business and an organisation’s top management should establish values, which include, among other issues, how the organisation values quality, innovation, continual improvement, and cares about its stakeholder’s needs and aspirations which includes its customers, employees, suppliers and society in general.
3. Organisation control, guidance and nurture
An organisation’s goals and objectives are achieved through effective leadership, adequate resourcing, an effective and efficient management system and competent and committed people. In the longer term, these actions and resulting behaviours lead to a positive organisation culture in which the values of the organisation are naturally shared across the workforce. An organisation should:
• use its; values, top management leadership as an example, management system and competency base to establish a sound organisation internal climate to control, guide and nurture its business processes
• identify its total requirement for competence, to be maintained internally or accessed externally via approved suppliers
• meet existing and projected future competence requirements by effective recruitment and development of people to occupy posts and roles
• monitor proactively and reactively through the analysis of incidents, behaviour, attitude and level of satisfaction of people.
4. The management of risk
Understanding risk and using this understanding, allocate resources to manage risk to deliver to the sustainable delivery of the expected quality of products and services. An organisation should:
• identify the key sources of potential harm to its survival, public profile and its ability to deliver quality results to its customers and other stakeholders and assess the associated risks
• prioritise risk on the basis of the combination of severity of consequence and the likelihood of occurrence
• manage significant risks that pose an unacceptable threat to the organisation so that they are either avoided, transferred, controlled or the consequence is mitigated by fully developed and tested contingency arrangements.
5. Customers and other stakeholders
Satisfied and loyal customers are essential for a sustainable organisation. Quality is a need and aspiration that lies within the eye of the stakeholders who exercise their influence and power on the behavior of the organisation. In general it is the customers who are the most influential and powerful although other stakeholders such as regulators, banks and insurers etc can cause an organisation to quickly cease to exist. As a priority organisations should:
• ensure that customers and significant stakeholders’ needs and aspirations are accurately analyzed and understood with respect to the organisation’s operations
• measure customer and stakeholders’ satisfaction
• use customer and stakeholders’ feedback to improve products, services and organisation operations by seeking to optimally balance relevant stakeholder needs and aspirations.
6. Management System
The sustainable delivery of consistent and reliable high performance to stakeholders requires the implementation and maintenance of an effective and efficient management system and a suitable and sufficient competence base. The management system should manage the organisation’s competence and, by encouraging the right behaviors, promote a positive organisation culture in the longer term. An organisation should carefully design its management system in order to:
• control and guide the organisation’s processes in order to deliver its vision, goals, objectives and targets though a ‘plan, do , check and act’ approach applied at all levels of the organisation from top management down to individual task level
• continually improve all aspects of the organisation’s performance
• manage risk within the totality of the organisation, including projects and relationships with stakeholders
• consistently deliver high quality products and services to customers within budget, on time and optimally satisfying the needs and aspirations of stakeholders
• promote a positive evolving organisation culture
• address all impacts of its activities, e.g. quality, health and safety, environmental, knowledge, data, etc through a single integrated structure, as appropriate.
7. Delivering quality results through commitment, ownership and planning
Quality does not happen by accident. It is the result of determining the appropriate levels of product or service quality, establishing quality acceptance criteria and planning to meet these criteria. Top management should demonstrate a commitment to quality management and organisations should:
• design and build quality into their structure and processes that deliver or support
products and services or act as a contingency if these fail or underperform.
• encourage process owners and people to take responsibility and champion planning and delivering of quality to the customer
• ensure that sufficient resources are available to plan and deliver the predetermined levels of product or service quality.
8. The process approach to delivering results
An organisation’s products and services are most efficiently and effectively delivered to customers through primary business processes, those clearly identifiable chains of recurrent activities with a planned outcome that extend across an organisation and through which inputs are transformed into outputs, of a defined quality, cost and delivery schedule, for the organisation’s customers. Establishing effective primary business processes is an essential requirement for a sustainable business and an organisation should:
• ensure that there is a clear link between the organisation’s purpose and its primary business processes
• design its primary and supporting business processes from a customer and stakeholder perspective
• provide effective visibility of its primary and supporting business processes
• ensure that process personnel have been trained and/or inducted in the requirements of these primary and supporting business processes
• establish the necessary resources to manage and operate these primary and supporting business processes.
When designing its business processes, products and services, an organisation should consider the total lifecycles and the need to sustain and make best use of the earth’s resources in the short and longer term.
9. Monitoring, measurement and data analysis
Monitoring, measurement and data analysis is necessary to control, confirm and analyse performance of the organisation’s and contracted management systems, processes, products and services and to take corrective actions, preventive actions and initiate changes to continually improve. An organisation should monitor proactively (via audits, inspections etc) and reactively (via accidents, incidents, complaints, near miss reporting and analysis) what is important to:
• customers
• staff
• other stakeholders
• process owners.
The organisation’s top management and process owners should analyse and measure in order to understand their structures and business processes and improve performance. The monitoring arrangements should form a hierarchy of actions that efficiently and effectively make the best use of the monitoring resource and should be periodically adjusted via management review To promote continual improvement of systems and processes. A positive organisational climate will encourage people at all levels to behave in a way that promotes quality via the identification of opportunities to improve processes that deliver products and services, identify risks and reduces failure and reduce waste. An organisation should:
• encourage people at every level of the organisation to generate creative ideas and recognise individuals who generate them
• maintain processes to review, evaluate, prioritize, select, develop and implement ideas that have been created
• undertake regular reviews and assessments of business processes to confirm that they continue to deliver the intended results, the management system is appropriate and being complied with, and to identify further opportunities to prevent failure, improve performance, reduce waste and reduce risk.
10. Problem solving and decision-making
An effective and evidence informed method of identifying the root cause of problems and developing solutions that not only provide a cost effective resolution of the issue, but also considers the associated risks. An organisation should:
• develop the competencies to enable root cause analysis, risk assessment and risk informed decision-making to be conducted at every level of the organisation
• maintain processes to establish the root cause of problems; develop and implement solutions and share both the problems and solutions across the organisation.
Fundamental to effective management and a positive organizational climate is the principle of a just approach when encountering and dealing with problems, i.e. question why and how the management system allowed a problem to occur instead of allocating blame to an individual or individuals when the causes are human error. However, where individuals have clearly violated the management system for selfish reasons they should be subject to disciplinary processes compliant with human resource legislation.
11. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships
The quality of an organisation’s products and services may be restricted by the weakest link in its supply chain. The satisfactory delivery of products and services by an organisation’s suppliers and partners is an essential requirement for a sustainable business. An organisation should:
• ensure that supplier processes integrate harmoniously with the organisation’s processes
• ensure that its customers’ requirements are accurately cascaded to all levels of its supply chain
• identify and manage any significant risks to the accurate delivery of products and services within the supply chain
• accept that both the organisation and its suppliers should benefit equitably from the relationship.'
