Blog
Quality Management…
July 20 2012
One of the best ways of optimising your quality management process is certainly having all the quality processes connected to one central system along with getting rid of silos of information. Having a centralised system triggering the required actions will certainly save you time when it comes to reporting on all your findings and communicating to those that need to know.
With a quality management system (QMS), organisations can put in place, proactive and reactive quality controls focusing on continuous process improvement.
We actually use a system that we promote to our clients and prospects, as they say the proof is in the pudding!! and we feel that by using a QMS ourselves we can obtain an real understanding. Rivo currently holds four ISO standards; 18001, 14001, 9001 and 27001, our QMS is used to help manage each of these.
One of the most crucial steps in choosing the right QMS is in identifying why you need it in the first place and how you think it could improve your existing process.
A QMS can streamline process, improve productivity, give one central location for analysis and data collection, manage and process customer feedback, enable external and internal audits, capture non-conformances, task or action tracking and supplier product quality.
QMS allows businesses to create reports to monitor progress toward improving the quality of processes. Recording information against all of this criteria, all of which is used to provide the evidence and audit trails needed to improve as an organisation and continue to obtain compliance standards each year.
Generally organisations who manage large amounts of sensitive data will have two audits from an external body per year, one as a health check and one to qualify to be re-accredited. The auditor can then be shown through the QMS, showing all the evidence that is required to support company policies and procedures and proves continuous improvement, the audits can often be completed within ½ day because with the QMS the information is all to hand in one system.
Having worked at Rivo Software a while now, I have seen the benefits from implementing quality policies and procedures. Having clear metrics to measure regularly ensure continuous improvement and helps to come up with better metrics.
It is our belief that a good QMS system will provide much of the infrastructure to support your organisation in achieving whatever standards you strive to achieve.
By David Cousins