Five Sigma - Management of Quality

Five Sigma - Management of Quality

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Part 1 – Review of ISO 9001:2015

Introduction

The ISO 9001 standard became official in 1987, it covers a wide range of areas such as finance, hospitality, tourism, education, and manufacturing and its aim is to share knowledge, provide solutions and support innovation (ISO website). It is a way to certify organizations that meet its requirements and is characterized by the following principles: costumer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision making and supplier involvement (Walt 2016 and Tricker 2016).

Figure 1: ISO 9001:2015 Principles and Framework

Source: own elaboration following the ISO 9001:2015

Modifications and improvements to ISO 9001:2015

ISO 9001:2015 is a great standard which is used all around the world and in many different organizations, however, some problems may appear while its implementation. According to Finney (2016), Sousa-Poza et al. (2009) and Psomas et al. (2010) the most common issues are the lack of communication, resources, infrastructure and employee engagement, lack of knowledge on formalised systems, absence of experience in auditing, lack of training, inadequate technical knowledge, deficit of leadership and management. Due to all these problems it is essential to continue changing and improving the standard to get a better probability of success in its implementation.

The first improvement is not related with a specific problem; it is related with the standard itself. Considering the different sizes of organizations and the wide range of activities done by each one of them, is it logical to have the same standard? Although it is difficult to accomplish, provide a variety of standards adapted to different sectors can improve the implementation and the performance of the quality management system in all companies. Therefore, it will reduce the appearance of many of the problems highlighted before.

One of the main issues is the lack of employee engagement and training. Knowing that the involvement of the employees is important in the success of the QMS is essential to reduce the effect of this. Thinking logically, the easiest way to change it is to provide training sessions to the employees; in those sessions, which are driven by the management or quality consultants, how to implement ISO 9001:2015 and how important and beneficial the QMS can be for the organisation will be explained and highlighted.

The inadequate technical knowledge is other of the recurrent problems. In order to reduce its negative effects, I suggest to choose the right employee for each task. It means that selecting the most qualified and experience employees for a specific implementation can decrease the appearance of this kind of issues.

Finally, the deficit of leadership and management can result in a bad implementation of the QMS. In big companies, this problem may appear less because they have people specialised in implementing quality systems but in medium and small companies it works different. The solution I suggest is to seek for professional help before implementing ISO 9001:2015. Using the knowledge of external consultants increase the chances of a successful implementation. Sadly, despite all the benefits of a good implementation of ISO 9001:2015 some companies may not be willing to make that expense.

To conclude, even improving the standard problems