Quality Policy: Opinions Please

[Paul Simpson]

Good for you

We currently are the market leader in terms of units in use in field, our lead times in supplying units and systems, our technology, the range of units and systems, are the sole suppliers of certain products, customers have indicated that our units are more reliable, and some other stuff as well according to our marketing material, we also have that we are the world leader all over our website and marketing material. This is still a relativley new market as well and only recently has shown good growth so we are expecting more competition

Sounds like you are market leader. Your policy should be to maintain that position.

The management are still dithering as to what KPI's we intend to start off with, before we started aiming for ISO 9001 registration the only thing measured was finicial performance but we have educated the CEO and he is giving us excellent support and is begining to see the benefit by identifying other areas to measure and improve.

Again the CEO shoud be able to see the link between the enablers (term from the EFQM Excellence model) what you do: On time delivery, Low rate of returns, low warranty claims, introduction of new products on time and with few glitches, quick response to enquiries etc. and the results - market share, customer satisfaction rating, repeat orders and ultimately profitability

My intent with the policy was to show where we are and that we want to stay there (i.e. number 1). "Fully fulfiling our customer needs" was sort of a cover all intended to mean on time delivery, right first time, capable of meeting their requirements, I just didn't see the point in spelling these out as which companies don't want to deliver on time etc.?

Again no need to go into detail in the policy - it becomes a book but some link to the process of setting objectives is good so people can follow the trail if they are interested.

"Effective use of our ISO 9001:2000 management system shall ensure that we continually improve all areas of our business and shall continue to evolve in line with our chosen markets."

Do you use "shall" in day to day language - if not I would recommend something like " We will continually improve all areas of our business and evolve in line with our chosen markets using our ISO 9001:2000 management system."

This part was intended to fulfil part of 5.3.b but the "evolve" part was to show that as our market changes we will change and become better adapted and more survivable as we do, sort of a Darwinian thing.

Again good stuff.

 

[Shaun Daly]

Our previous policy was a whole A4 page of verbiage (though it did contain the 8 QM principles"

I boiled it down to;

"It is the policy of T.P.Moulding Ltd to provide its customers with high quality products, delivered on time, in order to achieve customer satisfaction.

T.P.Moulding aims to achieve the continual improvement of its products & services, by committing to the requirements of ISO9001:2000 & TS16949:2002 and continually improving the QMS effectiveness, through process control, supplier monitoring & development, effective communication, employee involvement and management commitment."

 

[Denis9001 - 2007]

cherg

You got a lot of negative replies. I think the way to go is to first decide how you will (mostly) use the policy. You should discuss this with your boss. You can use it primarily for marketing (customers). In this case you can look at those Quality Guarantee tags you get on products or see in brochures/websites. You can have it as a more formal policy statement in lawyer type language (for the registrar). This then is like terms of contract or privacy stements on websites. No fun but says what it has to. Or you can target employees. In this case you can bullet it and make it easy to remember. Or you can do one annd release it before you start implementing your system to inform employees what and why you are doing iso9001. Remember, you can change your policy later. Don't worry about staff being "audited" and needing to know policy. They need to know according to their level. So if the factory floor worker don't know, no big deal. If the managers can't remember a policy document then they shouldn't be managers.