Quality Management Systems – An Orchestra in Harmony

 

The phrase quality management systems bring to mind images of efficiency. Let me rephrase the word 'efficiency' and it's meaning in conjunction with QualityManagement System.

 

QualityManagement Systems to me should be like a well-made movie, a well-written book, the most beautifully painted work or a composed symphony. Not a single note or brush stroke out of place; everything is in harmony. Now imagine a choir singing in the church. You love it because it’s the most beautiful thing you have ever heard. Now replace that church with your organization and the choir singing is the tool that we use to make it sound beautiful; in this case the tool is Quality Management System. Of course, the choir does not get it right on the first go. It takes a lot of practice and lots of lessons learned from mistakes made to get to perfect harmony.

 

I remember attending my very first ISO 9001 Lead Auditor class. There was this section about Fish Bone Diagram and in it the instructor talked about a Quality Management System. In my student manual and on the tutor’s slide were emphasized in bold letters the phrase "Parts that work together".  Isn't this what organizations are trying to achieve with the Quality Management System tool. For it is only a tool and not a guarantee. The Parts that work together work well only when you can bring in that harmony in your organization, that smoothness in your management. The leadership like the conductor of the orchestra plays a critical role in the success of the system.

 

The concept of quality began during the Industrial revolution. At the onset of mass production, a team of people worked to meet with their "quality criteria", however these were not always met owing reliance on an individual and not a system approach. It was Henry Ford (American business industrialist famous for the Ford Motor Company) and Frederick Winslow Taylor (one of the first management consultants and intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement in the early 20th century). These two recognized the limitations of the way the quality criteria were being met during the mass production and the failure of the method that was being used which led to poor quality of the output. Together with the brainchild of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Quality Management System was born along with the Plan-Do-Check-Act. 

 

A Quality Management System doesn't have to be uniform in every possible way. That is not the intention of a Quality Management System. It just needs to be that device to bring it all together despite the rough edges and corners that make up an organization. In QMII’s ISO 9001 Lead Auditor training we enable participants with the knowledge of how to correctly interpret the requirements of the standard as well as how to get the “harmony” needed from their systems.

 

What about the different parts that make up an organization, how do we get them to work together for a smooth Management System? It would seem as different as any of Jackson Pollock's painting - strips of different colors on a single canvas. It may look nice to some, but it does get very confusing even to the best art critic. To some it looks magnificent; a masterpiece, but to the others it's just some form of "doodle art". In the same way a quality managementsystem is written for the users of the system and not the critics – the auditors!

 

 

Fun fact - During world war II, Japan evolved from ashes to becoming the second largest economy in the world due to the philosophy and ideas taught by Dr. Deming, and the most important part being - Appreciating a system, which is what QMII believes in as well "Appreciating your Management System."