Implementing an ISO9000 standard Quality Management System
Once your business has more than about 5 employees, it's no longer good enough just to rely on talking to each other to know what's going on with your orders and clients. You need systems, processes and procedures: consistent ways of doing things to ensure that client orders are fulfilled in a quality, efficient and timely fashion.
These will combine together to form part of your company's
"Quality Management System"
Not only does this make sure that your company runs smoothly and your clients receive exactly what they ordered, on time and to the appropriate specification, it also helps to maintain staff morale (they are less frustrated) and permits you a better night's sleep.
If you can say that you operate to the principles of the ISO9000 set of standards, it gives your clients confidence in your ability to organise and deliver what they want. Some clients will not engage you unless they know you operate to the ISO9000 standards, and may wish to audit your company on that basis, before they will do business with you. Other clients may only deal with formally ISO9000-accredited businesses.
Have a look at what the International Organisation for Standardization says about its industry-recognised ISO9000 family of standards:
They also publish a short guide for small businesses:
You may also find this useful:
What will I do for you ?
- I will come in and guide you through the activity of setting up your Quality Management System.
- I will engage you and your staff in the activity, delegating work to them if you require it, or delivering new documentation myself if not.
- I will work with you to ensure that all your processes are owned for the future a member of your staff.
- I will work with you to put in place a continuous improvement process.
- I will ensure that your processes link to your own business management methods in a way that keeps them current, identifies issues early, and provides you with the information you need in order to run your business properly.
- I can look at your whole organisation, or just a small part.
What will you get out of it ?
- You'll know the whole of the organisation in scope has a set of processes and procedures which clearly define the way it operates.
- You can demonstrate to your clients that you work consistently and that you check the quality of what you deliver as you build your product or service.
- You will be a significant way towards becoming ISO9000 certified if that's what you want for your business.
- You'll have a set of documents which define your processes and procedures. Some will be those you had in place already, or perhaps manuals you had already been using. Others will be new, and the first time things have been written down in this form. There are some examples below.
- You'll have a Management System document which draws everything together at company or organisation level, and shows that you have a complete system for managing your business effectively.
Here are some example processes with the associated procedures.
Organisation names have been replaced with generic placemarks.
A process built for part of an I.T. organisation which needed to plan its resources for the coming year:
A process built for part of an I.T. organisation which needed to control the way requests for work came into their teams, in order to ensure staff were working on the highest priority items, and that all work was strategic.
