Quality Management
Quality is a differentiator. Use a quality management system (QMS) to get results
In a highly competitive market, standing out is difficult. Finding out how you can make yourself desirable to consumers is always tricky. This is especially true amongst the lists of other products or services available in an online shopping place, although you can have this problem in stores as well. There are a lot of reasons why your product should stand out amongst your competitors’ products. Your product or service is well-produced, your marketing is engaging, and your customer service leaves satisfied upon satisfied people. Why then do you seem to be receiving fewer sales for less return on your investment?
There must be something in your production process that is falling short when compared to the rest of your first-rate service, but how do you figure out and fix these issues? This is where a quality management system (QMS) comes in to help you ensure that your company is working as effectively as possible and does so consistently.
This article will cover the basics of quality management and how implementing a quality management system can help your company.
What is Quality Management?
Quality management is a system of management processes that supervise the myriad diverse activities, processes, and tasks within your business. This could be applied to any structure in your organization or all of them. A quality management system can be used to ensure that all the products and services you offer are produced and delivered consistently. A quality management system can be useful to any business. It doesn’t matter what the goals are, if you produce a good or service, or even if your company is a non-profit. A proper quality management system is there to help your business attain and maintain the highest quality level possible.
A quality management system certifies that all the processes in your business function well. It also monitors the relationship between your shareholders and your company culture. All these elements work towards long-term success while keeping the bottom line in mind: customer satisfaction.
There are many important benefits that quality management can supply to your company. Each makes trying to implement a quality management system worthwhile. Mainly these benefits are simplification, clarification, and control over your production.
Simplification
When you implement a quality management system, you help simplify your business processes. You’ll be able to better identify and address customer concerns and thus garner more satisfaction. Your business will become better at implementing improvements, and you’ll be better equipped to truly use your resources as effectively as possible. Internal communication will likely improve as the system simplifies. Not to mention a quality management system is about preventing product defects, and a QMS helps you do that simply.
Clarification
A good QMS identifies all the aspects of your company and its purpose. Clarifying company purpose also means creating better trainee programs. Employees that better understand their responsibilities and how they affect the final product are better at communicating. Not to mention well-trained employees are more efficient and produce fewer errors, saving your company money. Quality management also ensures that your business meets regulatory standards.
Control
A QMS should become familiar with all aspects of the organization. It should identify all the moving parts of your operations to ensure that your business is operating effectively. Having an in-depth understanding of how your business works means you have better control over production flow. This control ensures that the company is still effectively meeting its goals. You can develop more efficient methods of production, and it will allow you to better understand how to grow your company going forward.
The Stages of Quality Management
Any quality management system has three key stages, a system that was developed by Joseph M. Juran. He wrote about quality management systems and developed the quality trilogy. In order to achieve all the listed benefits, Juran insists that that are three elements of quality management that are necessary for success.
This system is built like a triangle, and the three quality principles all work together to create a strong center. The three principles are quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. Each of these stages comes together and supports one another to create an effective quality management system. When one of these sections falter, or a small part begins to fail, the other sections should still stand. However, with a compartmentalized business, it will be easier to identify the source of the problem for better problem assessments.
Quality Planning
Quality planning and assurance are the most vital functions of a quality management system. When you make a business plan with QMS principles, you’re ensuring that your plan will effectively address the goals. You are also confirming that all projects work towards the goals of your company. The plans should be error-free and fool-proof. Quality management should ensure that any new project or procedure is clearly communicated to the employees who will work on it. They will also be sure to inform stakeholders.
Quality assurance comes with quality planning. This means your QMS continues to watch over your plans to ensure that they meet expectations and follow the provided guidelines.
Quality Control
Quality control helps your work procedures become standard in your business. This part of quality management is supposed to ensure that your business is functioning around quality procedures. This is where you can identify procedures that are not working as intended. This process will also include periodic inspections that ensure everything in your business is working excellently.
Documentation is also vital to maintaining quality control. By continuously documenting all the changes in policies and production, you can be sure that your quality management is making notable positive changes in your company.
Quality Improvement
Quality improvement is just as essential as quality assurance. You don’t just want your company to stay the same, you want your business to grow and become even more successful. QMS is there to help you identify which areas of your business could be expanded. Quality management will develop research tactics and effective plans for growing your business.
All of these qualities work together to generate a successful quality management system.
Effective Quality Management Improvement
There are a lot of different strategies that a quality management system might implement to ensure that your company is always reaching towards the future. An improvement plan is not a short-term strategy. As fundamental as consistency is for a QMS, improvement is just as necessary, and any improvement plans should be ongoing and developing for the entirety of an organization’s lifetime.
Here are some tips that can you improve your quality management improvement plans and they can help improve how your business functions overall.
Business Orientation
A lot of businesses can lose touch with the most basic goal of any company. The highest priority of a business should be satisfying and gaining customers, both internal and external. Everyone in your business should work towards the goal of improving service while gaining and maintaining higher levels of customer service.
Strong Leadership
Your business needs strong leadership in all departments. Good leaders ensure that everyone in your company stays on goal. You want to hire leaders who will ensure that their departments and teams work well with one another, and do so efficiently. Good leaders should be able to take and give advice, and always be willing to learn how they can be more effective. Managers will be more effective as they use data to make factual management decisions.
Employee Involvement
This is key in any organization. When your employees don’t feel heard or valued they are less effective workers who feel disconnected from their work. This often means you can’t keep employees for the long term. By involving your employee feedback in your quality management planning, you can address internal communication issues and increase efficiency.
Using Processes
Systems and processes are the core ways your organization achieves results. By effectively using processes to ensure that tasks and activities are done efficiently. You’ll increase employee satisfaction because tasks will be more effective at describing the purpose of these activities. Overall, customer satisfaction will also increase because of new procedures that should increase quality and consistency.
By constantly looking for improvement, your business will be able to grow, but not only that, you’ll be able to better identify the needs of your business preemptively.
Using Quality Management in Your Business
A QMS can be useful whether you’re a company that just needs a little adjusting to become more efficient, or if you’re making a new business. A quality management system can help you ensure your quality standards start high and stay there. With a quality management system implemented in your business, you’ll gain a vast number of benefits. Each benefit this system brings helps you achieve all your company’s goals.
When your business is running more efficiently, your company can start gaining and keeping customers. Along with better internal communication, and better customer service, your company will start using its resources more effectively.