Quality Managment

ISO-9000 is a quality assurance program that is published by the international organization of standards.  The purpose of it is to verify that companies are following their published standards consistently.  “The ISO 9000 family of standards represents an international consensus on good quality management practices. It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related supporting standards. –ISO”.

The ISO-9001:2008 is a standard that provides a standardized set of requirements for a quality management system.  The standard lists what must be required in the management system, but does not dictate just how they are to be met.  This is regardless of what the industry the company is involved in.  It is the only standard against which companies can be certified.  This certification, however, is not required by the standard.  Other aspects of the ISO-9000 family cover fundamentals, vocabulary, performance improvements, documentation, financial, and other economic respects.  The standard requires the company to audit itself that it is managing its processes effectively.  This is basically to so the company can insure that it is in full control of its activities.  If a company wished to do so, they could have an outside certification body do the process to get a certification.  This will cut down on customer audits or reduce the duration of those audits.  All of this is to satisfy customers that the products made by the company will meet their requirements.

There are 8 principles of ISO-9000.

  The 8 principles are:

 Principle 1: Customer focus

 Principle 2: Leadership

 Principle 3: Involvement of people

 Principle 4: Process approach

 Principle 5: System approach to management

 Principle 6: Continual improvement

 Principle 7: Factual approach to decision making

 Principle 8: Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

Customer focus: 

A business is in business to help customers get what they want.  “Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.”  Three benefits from a customer focus are, increased market share from more people wanting to buy from you, increased effectiveness in the use of resources to help customer satisfaction, and improved customer loyalty.

Leadership:

”Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives.”  Benefits of this are that people will understand and be motivated toward the company goals, all activities are evaluated, aligned, and implemented in a unified way, and miscommunication between levels of a company will be minimized.

Involvement of people:

            “People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization's benefit.”  If everyone in the company is involved in the quality process some benefits would be motivated workers, further innovation and creativity in furthering the organization objectives, people being accountable for what they do, and people feeling a need to help improve the process and therefore having a greater participation.

Process Approach:

“A desired result is achieved more efficiently when activities and related resources are managed as a process.” If your process is well documented and can be managed you will have lower costs and a shorter cycle times using resources more effectively.  You will also have better results and a more focused and higher priority for improvement opportunities.

System approach to management:

            “Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization's effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives.“  Some benefits of understanding how each part of your management sytem works with the other parts would be having the systems integrated and aligned to achive the desired results, you will be able to focus effort on key processes, and provide confidence to interested parties that you are consistent, effective, and efficient.

Continual Improvement:

“Continual improvement of the organization's overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization.”  The benefits of continuing to improve on your processes would be better performance through improved organization, better alignment of activities to the company strategy, and greater flexibility to take advantage of opportunities.

Factual approach to decision making:

            “Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information.”  Making decisions on facts instead of what people think can lead to better informed decisions, an increased effectiveness in past decisions through reference to factual outcomes, and an increased ability to review, challenge, and change prior decisions and opinions.
Mutually beneficial supplier relationships:
            “An organization and its suppliers are interdependent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability of both to create value.”  Some benefits to a better relationship with suppliers would be an increased ability to create value for companies, greater flexibility and speed to respond to changes in market forces or customer wants, and a greater optimization of costs and resources used.

 After reading through these I wonder if we could make an ISO-9000 system for the fishroom.  I am going to have to think about this.

"ISO - ISO 9000 Quality Management - ISO 9000 Essentials." ISO - International Organization for Standardization. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. <http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_9000_essentials>.