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| Tuesday, 9 March 2004 |
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ISO 9001: 2000 standard, a step closer to Total Quality Management by Ranjith Goonatilake C.Tex, A.T.I., M.B.I.M., M.I.I.M, F.S.L.Q.A International Consultant, former Director (Consultancy & Training), Sri Lanka Standards Institution The ISO 9000 Quality Management system underwent the second revision in December 2000; which has borrowed many concepts from the Quality Gurus. The revised standard has features such as process approach which is the key to the new standard. In addition features such as customer satisfaction measurements, continual improvements are included in the new standard. Process approach For the students of Total Quality Management this is not now a new concept, it has existed from the days of Dr. Shewart and Dr. Demings. The phrase "next process is your customer" is well-known to quality managers, Quality Guru's such as Ishikawa and Professor J. S. Oakland explained this concept in detail. Continuous improvement Quality Guru Dr. Deming's in his 14 points on Principles for Transformation, of an organisation. In his 14th principle "Take action to accomplish the transformation," he says "Every activity, every job is a part of a process. A flow diagram of any process will divide the work into stages. Work comes into any stage, changes state, and moves on into the next stage. Any stage has a customer, the next stage. To accomplish the transformation one should accommodate continual improvement of methods and procedures, aimed at better satisfaction of the customer at the next stage." For continuous improvement of a stage (process) he said to use the Shewhart Cycle (introduced in 1939 by Walter A. Shewhart and later in 1950 became Deming's Cycle or P-D-C-A cycle) for each stage. Thus the continuous improvement concept was started by Shewhart, later the concept was developed with other TQM Gurus, concept such as seven basic steps for problem solving for process improvements, Kaizen, Taguchi or Juran's trilogy for quality improvements. Identification of processes and their interaction The ISO 9001:2000 Quality system says that the organisation should describe, understand the processes and the sequence of their interaction. Any organisation during its initial planning stage will identify the processes needed for the organisation and will establish these processes. For example in any garment factory, it has to have a sales process, purchasing process and production process but from factory to factory the sales procedure and other procedures will vary. For the improvement of the processes, Edward M. Baker of the Ford Company developed a questionnaire which was given to each group, the questionnaire covered four areas namely, the organisation, your group, concerning your customers (internal/ external) and concerning your suppliers (internal/external). Documentation as per standard There are many ways of documenting the manuals, procedures and related documents. One method is to document manual by identifying key processes and supporting processes, whereas another method is to follow documents as exactly as given in the standard, which is more auditor/organisation friendly. The question is being asked why flow charts are not used in Sri Lanka. It was mentioned that the flow charts are used in the London traffic and how simple it is, whereas in Sri Lanka the procedures are more details. But what we fail to understand was that Engineers use flow charts in London and they can understand it, whereas in Sri Lanka how many supervisors or managers can understand a flow chart. Conclusion As seen ISO 9001:2000 standard is an evolution from the earlier standard. It is not a new concept but the standard is becoming closer to Total Quality Management concepts. All Quality Guru's has accepted the following as a requirement for the TQM, namely * Commitment of the top management * Continuous improvement * Training from top to bottom of the organisation * Participative management * Use of quality teams The new standard covers the first three requirements, I think the next revision in 2006 should incorporate the next two requirements namely use of participatory management and quality teams like QC circles and improvement teams. |
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