10 Things Your Quality Assurance Consultant Must Tell You
Quality Management System or QMS can be troublesome if it is not properly developed, implemented, and maintained. An efficient QMS should have ten common characteristics. If you are trying to develop a QMS and asking an experienced quality management consultant for help, they will explain these characteristics.
Here, we’ll discuss ten fundamentals of an ideal QMS:
1. Key Principles of QMS
Most organizations implement a QMS to enhance customer satisfaction. Customers are always looking for better products or services that can meet their requirements, these requirements and expectations should be kept up with product or service specifications. You can determine your customers’ requirements by collecting customer data on delivered products, the number of warranty claims and user opinion, and performing customer satisfaction surveys and dealer reports. Moreover, ensure continual improvement. Improve the quality of your offerings to retain customer satisfaction.
2. Requirements of QMS and Requirements for Products
You should understand that the requirements of QMS and the requirements for the products or services are different. The requirements for QMS are clearly defined in the ISO 9001 Standard. , but these are generic, this standard is applicable to any organization. ISO 9001 Standard does not specify any requirements for products. The requirements of the products should be specified by the customers, regulators, and top management. It is imperative to maintain a balance between your QMS requirements and product/service requirements if achieving quality assurance certification is your ultimate goal.
3. Approach to QMS
If you want to develop an effective QMS, follow the right approach and consider the following:
• Determine the requirements and expectations of your customers and interested parties,
• Quality policy and objectives must be established,
• The processes required for attaining quality objectives must be identified; it is also important to identify who will be responsible for fulfilling those quality objectives,
• Adequate resources,
• Methods to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of each process running within the system,
• Establish a process for maintaining continual improvement.
4. Process Approach
The process approach is a key fundamental of QMS. Define a set of activities that transform input into output by using certain resources. Your organization might have multiple interrelated and interacting processes, and outputs of one process become the input of another process. Systematic identification and management of processes within your organization are the two elements that develop a process approach. If this seems difficult, asking your quality assurance consultant may help.
5. Quality Policy and Quality Objectives
With the help of your consultant, develop quality policy and objectives that are suitable for QMS requirements and for your business requirements.
6. Roles of Top Management in Maintaining the QMS
ISO 9001:2015 has clearly stated the importance of roles played by the top management. During the certification audit, external auditors may want to determine the engagement of your top management in implementing and maintaining the QMS.
7. Documentation
ISO 9001:2015 Standard has made documentation a little easier for you. Now you don’t have to document every process, and you can document the processes that are relevant to the QMS.
8. Evaluation
Evaluation of your QMS is important to determine its efficiency, and this evaluation will help you find ways to improve your QMS.
9. Continual Improvement
As stated earlier, continual improvement is important to establish your organization’s dedication to maintaining the quality of offered products or services.
10. Roles of Statistical Techniques
Statistical techniques will help gather more information about customer requirements and market trends. Analyzing numerous relevant variables gathered with the help of statistical techniques will help you solve existing problems and enhance the effectiveness of the QMS.
When you are talking with a consultant, observe whether he/she explains these fundamentals to you or not.