What inputs and outputs are related to QMS Performance?

[Helmut Jilling]

Not sure I understand it. Are you saying that ISO 9001 should be implemented under the perspective of INTERNAL (to the organization) customers and suppliers, and eventually, when that process works, the EXTERNAL customer will get what they want?

Not exactly. Let's say we have defined the organization as a series of internal processes (ie: Sales, Design, Manufacturing, Shipping). A bit simplistic, but it will make the point.

A primary input to Sales is the external customer's needs, requirements and expectations. The Sales process is to understand and digest these into an understandable set of requirements - the Sales output. These are provided to Sale's internal customer - Design.

Design and Engineering take this as an input, and further develop the technical and product details to achieve these requirements. In many cases, they never talked to the customer himself. They take the Sales outputs and process them. If done correctly, the customer's order moves to the next level. The internal customer to design is Manufacturing. The output of Design are the documents that Manufacturing needs to fulfill the order to the external customer's expectations.

The next internal customer is Shipping. Manufacturing must function so as to meet Shipping's needs. If done correctly, Shipping gets great parts, on time, and ships great stuff to the external customer.

This is overly simplified, there are many more steps and substeps. But, at each stage, the process seeks to meet the needs of the next customer. The same for support processes. They seek to make their internal customer's needs met very well. This all serves to move the product through better, faster, cleaner, smoother to the ultimate external customer.

This is a 4 hour seminar, and it is hard to distill it into 4 paragraphs. But this is how the folks rowing in the bottom of the boat, can meet the needs of an external customer they never met, and hardly understand. By meeting the needs of the next process in this "bucket brigade."

If everyone tries to see the external customer, and meet his needs, they fail to meet the needs of the next process. Consequently, the processes don't work well, and the external customer's needs are not satisfied.

 

[Jim Wynne]

If everyone tries to see the external customer, and meet his needs, they fail to meet the needs of the next process. Consequently, the processes don't work well, and the external customer's needs are not satisfied.

Excellent post. This all relates back to the concept of leadership, which consists in making sure that everyone A) understands what's expected of them; B) understands how what they're doing relates to the end of the line, and C) understands that their primary responsibility is to do the job at hand in accordance with methods that have been proven successful. The emphasis is on designing processes that, when strung together, form an ordered symbiotic relationship wherein the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Contrast this with a bunch of people setting up processes without talking to each other, and with no knowledge whatsoever of how what they're doing affects the next operation, which is the way most businesses operate, and the reason that things so often go wrong.

 

[Helmut Jilling]

The emphasis is on designing processes that, when strung together, form an ordered symbiotic relationship wherein the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Thanks. I like how you phrased it. That sums up what I try to do for clients, to help them learn how to extract maximum value from this system.

Contrast this with a bunch of people setting up processes without talking to each other, and with no knowledge whatsoever of how what they're doing affects the next operation, which is the way most businesses operate, and the reason that things so often go wrong.

This is probably the number one failure I see during audits. Pretty good systems which are not designed to ever become great...They need to be redesigned.

 

[bdetchevery]

Not sure I understand it. Are you saying that ISO 9001 should be implemented under the perspective of INTERNAL (to the organization) customers and suppliers, and eventually, when that process works, the EXTERNAL customer will get what they want?

Not to put words into others mouths, but I think the basic idea is that if you want the customer to be treated well, the employees need to be treated well first.

If a customer gets 'the runaround' from an employee answering the phone, it's probably because that employee is getting 'the runaround' from others in the organization.

Right or wrong we tend to treat the customer the way we are treated by others. Unless we make a conscious effort otherwise.

 

[vanputten]

Are we really?

Are we really having a discussion whether or not to understand external inputs into the organization such a market demands, customer requirements, regulatory requiremnts, etc.? And whether or not to compare the organiztion's output to the understood inputs?

Are we really discussing and proposing that the best approach to any organization is to look at only internal customer - supplier relationships?

I can't beleive it.

B is to C, C is to D, D is to E.... Forget "A" which are the beginning external requirements and "F" which is the output. And forget comparing "F" to "A"?

I have never known of an organiztion where the interrelationsip of internal processes was linear as I have indicated in the "B is to C" concept. There must be references to external inputs all throughout the organization and the internal processes.

Hopefully the quality objectives thorughout the organization can be tied back to the external inputs. This should support a constancy of purpose in meeting external inputs.

Also, I did not state to ignore the internal customer / supplier relationships. I said that first we must know the external inputs.

Regards,

Dirk