Interesting Discussion Using a Wiki to implement a Quality Management System (QMS)

[Caster]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

Thanks Pancho, Le Chiffre

I would never have thought to use a wiki for a QMS, I like the idea a lot.

We have both an intranet and a computerized QMS.

The problem here seems to be that the culture is "verbal", people "ask" and "get told" what to do.

Unfortunately in a verbal culture the power of a wiki (or any documented system) is lost.

Perhaps I can try this in my next job.

I see a business opportunity here to re sell an existing wiki software package with some value added ISO 9000 templates to get it started.

Just needs a snappy name for marketing.

How about TotalQualityWiki?

SixSigmaWiki?

Wiki9000?

 

[machrk]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

I had an epiphany recently.

.... The epiphany part is the realization of how incredibly, amazingly, unbelievably useful the wiki is to complete this process. In fact, it is so useful that I now feel this urge to evangelize. Hence my contribution here.

If one of you finds this half as useful as we did at Geometrica, my work is done.

Cheers!
Pancho

Pancho
amazing - I had read about your wiki a while back and here we are in the same forum!

I am a quality manager at a steel plant where there may be 10,000 people working on any day and although there are some procedures that are only used by a few, there are a number that everyone has to follow. I wasn't sure if we let everyone edit a wiki system on our site - from the shop floor to the ceo as there are mainy procedures with significant safety risks eg explosions, confined space etc

however I am really interested in how a wiki approach could be used to do the document review more efficiently

we use Microsoft Sharepoint for some systems, EMC's Documentum and Intranent pages managed by Access databases

I can see that with Sharepoint that the Document Libraries could be used for the procedures - once they have been developed through Sharepoint's wiki function.

I am also interested in how you got people to participate in updating the wiki - I find it easy - but many others are more comfortable with adding useful articles to the Sharepoint Document Library without putting any context around why they think the article is useful.

also in terms of records management - we would find 6 months too short - some of our procedures need to be kept for at least 10 years after being made obsolete - especially if there is a legal case that can drag out to over 10 years beyond an incident

so I have been intrigued since I first saw a posting about your system

KerrieAnne aka machrk

 

[Pancho]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

The problem here seems to be that the culture is "verbal", people "ask" and "get told" what to do.

Unfortunately in a verbal culture the power of a wiki (or any documented system) is lost.

I think that if you manage to get at least one individual in Top Management to buy into the idea, the wiki will take off. As Top Management must buy into the QMS anyway, this may not be as hard as it seems. In reality the wiki is simply a tool for a much more effective QMS.

And the wiki (or rather, the QMS) should quickly shift the locus of power in an organization from the talkers to the writers.

I see a business opportunity here to re sell an existing wiki software package with some value added ISO 9000 templates to get it started.

Just needs a snappy name for marketing.

Yep. If I wasn’t at this moment building domes, I’d do it myself!

How about Qwiki - the Quality wiki? Go fer it and remember us when you’re rich, ok?

In all seriousness, one thing that we touched on in the article only tangentially is the remarkably low cost of the tools. Both the wiki engine and Bugzilla are available in open source. But there are many ways a business built on this idea may add value: for example, (a) helping an organization break its “wiki panic”, (b) building the initial network of links in the wiki and guiding subsequent growth, so that the information remains accessible, and, as you propose, (c) templating the common parts of the QMS.

Cheers,
Pancho

 

[Pancho]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

amazing - I had read about your wiki a while back and here we are in the same forum!

I am a quality manager at a steel plant where there may be 10,000 people working on any day and although there are some procedures that are only used by a few, there are a number that everyone has to follow. I wasn't sure if we let everyone edit a wiki system on our site - from the shop floor to the ceo as there are mainy procedures with significant safety risks eg explosions, confined space etc

Hi, KerrieAnne! Small world indeed!

Yes, yours is quite a different environment from Geometrica. Although I am not certain that our experience would scale 100 times, there are a few features of our implementation that help in minimizing the risk that erroneous or malicious contributions would derail the system. We described them in the article, but essentially:

1. Any edit is reported immediately to the document’s responsible person by RSS or email who is obligated to review.
2. All contributions are signed and dated, and can be rolled back.
3. There is a mechanism to report “bugs”, correct them and take corrective action. In our experience this quickly becomes very popular (and useful), since it is a “safer” vehicle for someone that is not certain whether an edit to a document that they are contemplating is indeed desirable.

I am also interested in how you got people to participate in updating the wiki

The initial participation is the most difficult, particularly since wiki content exhibits strong “network effects”. In other words, before there is any wiki content, there is little incentive to use the tool. Fortunately for us, we had to write the documents for our QMS, wiki or not. We established weekly goals for documentation. Writing the documents on a wiki is initially no more difficult than writing them in Word, and we simply required the contributions to be on the wiki. Once we built a small but critical body of documents, the benefits of the wiki became compelling. Editing and new writing became much, much easier, and the documents were and are actually used!

One other advantage that we enjoyed at Geometrica is that we had been using a wiki for project management for over one year. All that had used that system were very enthusiastic when the QMS effort converted over to the wiki.

In the future, when we achieve collaboration utopia, all the brains in my organization will connect with wifi. In the meantime they can be on wiki.

Good luck!
Pancho

 

[machrk]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

thanks Pancho
actually we have just been audited to the EU's CE Marking for Construction Products Directive CPD 89/106/eec plus singapore's steel products BC1 :2008 for factory production control

the CE CPD is a maze of documents and I used the wiki in Microsoft Sharepoint to keep track of all the details - it helped enormously - so I guess it was sort of like your using a wiki for project management

cheers
KerrieAnne

 

[machrk]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

The wiki started as an alternative to the Definitions, Acronyms, Abbreviations and Interpretations forum. The initial content was from Bill Pflanz's General Quality Assurance Glossary and grew from there. There are only a handful of Covers that learned wiki mark-up, so after the initial coding of the the glossary (done my Marc an myself on a previous version of the wiki), not much more has been done.

It's probably easier to find a quick definition of a term on the wiki, but if one wants to read interpretations and discussion, that is better served by the forums.

maybe there aren't always links to Elsmar Cove's in the forum discussions - eg I like this one - https://elsmar.com/wiki/index.php/Using_a_wiki_for_QMS_documentation

cheers
KerrieAnne aka machrk

 

[machrk]

Re: Using a wiki to implement a QMS

Agree, Le Chiffre. We gave up on Categories and substituted them with "wiki gnoming" to write up navigation indices. Its a bit more work, but in our experience categories were always so jumbled that they were useless.

BTW, in your opinion, why is the Cove's wiki not used much?

maybe the link should be to here - https://elsmar.com/wiki/index.php/Special:Allpages - instead of the Wiki main pages link?

KerrieAnne

 

[harishankarpv]

Hi this is hari and i am working on a proposal to implement wiki to give life to our static QMS.

We have ms excel record templates. Can wiki manage changes or allow changes on ms excel record.

Can anyone share their experience if they have dealt with such a situation

thank you
Hari

 

[Pancho]

Hi, Hari, and Welcome to The Cove!

In our wiki we try to display all info in the wiki's format. If your wiki has a WYSIWIG editor, it should be possible to copy-paste the table into the wiki's editor. But the formulas do not copy-paste.

If you must have formulas in your controlled spreadsheets, then you will need to upload the Excel file itself to the wiki. We'd recommend that you do this in addition to (and not instead of) displaying the info as a wiki-table or as an image.

You might also look into a wiki that can display office documents natively. (broken link removed) can do that.

Good Luck!
Pancho

 

[Le Chiffre]

I agree entirely with Panchobook.

I suggest you decide whether you want (or need) to keep your data in Excel or make the leap to reproduce the records in wiki format. Using Excel templates can be powerful but it does lock you into Microsoft Office as these don't convert easily to other spreadsheet utilities. This can also be a problem when accessing from a station without a compatible version of MS Excel (.xlsx anyone?) and may cause confusion for less Excel-proficient users.

The wiki format is simple, which at first makes you feel like you're taking a step backwards, but if you successfully convert your data it is more accessible (from any web browser, even a mobile device) anywhere, without the need for MS Office, and because of its simplicity is not intimidating to new users.

We made the transition slowly, over a few years. Gradually switching from hyperlinked Excel/Word files to wiki articles. The lack of sophisticated formulas and interdependencies has actually made the system easier to understand and maintain.