Quality Policy awareness records

[Gialandon]

I spent some time supporting a single company with mutliple sites; all employees had a card-sized copy of the Quality Policy in our lanyard-worn IDs. There were also posters up.

One (miserable, always-in-quality-trouble) site held an annual dog-and-pony show about the QP, another (smooth running, never-in-trouble) site simply had the QP questions (what is it?, where can you find it?, how do you support it?) come up as part of every internal audit. For that smooth-running site, it was very casual and everything was copacetic. For the other site, we'd occasionally have meltdowns in front of 3rd parties specifically about the QP, partially because that site was far more concerned about the appearance of quality than they were about "doing good stuff all the time."

love the idea of having it on their id card!

 

[Gialandon]

This is one of the most inane and misapplied requirements of the standard. The PERFECT time and place to ask anyone (especially the higher ups) about the quality policy is when you uncovered situations such as:

1) Someone with authority releasing nonconforming products to the customer to make quotas.

2) A salesperson deliberately lying to a customer about delivery dates, product performance, pricing, etc.

3) Refusal to address a customer complaint just because they represent only 0.002% of your business volume.

4) etc ad nauseum.

The intent of the policy requirement is to basically inform the whole workforce that the organization is committed to satisfy customers as a business strategy. The way the standard is phrased and how organizations attempt to comply with it is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, silly and non value added.

100% agree - but if there is no record it doesn't exist right.

 

[Randy]

Prove that I "understand".

Should one not have to adequately define "understand" before it can be verified as to its existence? Of course there would have to be "understanding" of the definition 1st wouldn't there?

Wanna hear a story about a chicken and an egg?

 

[Bev D]

100% agree - but if there is no record it doesn't exist right.

No…the existence of a record doesn’t mean it happened and the absence of a record doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What you are talking about is providing something that any num-nuts auditor will recognize as compliance. And then they will move on. A badge card is the easiest thing for a brainless auditor to accept - we wouldn’t want to irritate them by making them think or - God forbid - actually work. So go ahead and invest a ton of money and time on a meaningless badge card. Or maybe a bunch of posters you tape up to the walls…but for heaven’s sake don’t take any time to actually get people to take Quality seriously.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

The utter uselessness of a policy has been debated here for a long time, but the ISO pseudo experts still mandate its existence via the Harmonized Structure text, which all ISO management system standards have to follow. But just like they got rid of the inanely archaic requirement for a quality manual, they should do the same for policy.

 

[Randy]

So go ahead and invest a ton of money and time on a meaningless badge card. Or maybe a bunch of posters you tape up to the walls…but for heaven’s sake don’t take any time to actually get people to take Quality seriously.

Goodness, you're starting to sound like me!

 

[Bev D]

Goodness, you're starting to sound like me!

I think it’s just old age. Not willing to put up with crap anymore.