The amelioration keeps going ; the PDCA; the Deming wheel; Management by quality; The QMS; The Kaizen method... so many different names for one and the same idea: The desire to improve.
Today, many companies are certified “Quality Management – ISO 9001” , which is sometimes not accessible to SMEs/VSEs: Too expensive or too restrictive to implement.
Furthermore, you can apply the basic principles of QMS to your business to take a first step towards improving your performance.
Here are the 5 key points to quickly/easily implement the basics of the Quality Management System.
- 1 – Motivate the troops
Continuous improvement must be seen as a business philosophy:
There is no point in launching if only management believes in it or conversely if you are not supported by your superiors.
A good internal communication session to explain this approach to everyone is essential. Everyone must act, at their own level, but towards the same goal.
Indeed, everything is based on a collaborative and participatory system where group work is favored.
Brainstorming and other meetings will be expected, so you might as well go there with joy and good humor, right?
- 2 – Deming’s wheel to avoid going in circles
You are the manager of your business, hyper motivated by this project and your team is in the starting blocks: great!
When suddenly the annoying question: “What do we start with, boss?” »
Fortunately, Deming thought of you:
First of all, create a multidisciplinary project team (at Quotex, teams of 3 people on average are formed) and focus on the first point of improvement that you wish to bring to your company:
- Write a job offer
- Reduce electricity consumption
- Improve after-sales service
- …
Plan / Plan: Plan everything
Do not leave room for doubts about your improvement objectives (estimate of time and budget allocated to the project, findings, issues, implementation of performance indicators, etc.). The goal is to plan where and how you are going.
Do / Implement: With or without test phase
This step can be interpreted in two ways depending on your project:
- You execute the action prepared in the “Plan”
- You execute a test phase of the action to be implemented. This phase is often essential when setting up a large project, to accentuate the “Step by step” side of the action and increase the chances of doing it right the first time.
Check / Verify: Measure to understand
After executing the action, return to your objectives and performance indicators defined in the “Plan” phase and measure that the results obtained in the “Do” phase correspond to what was planned.
Act/Agir: Take stock
You planned, executed, checked and yet you still haven't achieved your goal...
The “Act” phase is when you identify the causes of non-performance using information collected in previous phases.
And here we go again for a spin! Plan new changes, execute,
check…finally you understand!
On the other hand, when you achieve the desired result, formalize your solutions so that they are sustainable over time.
IN SUMMARY
- Say what you do (PLAN)
- Do as you say (DO)
- Check what you have done (CHECK)
- Do Better (ACT)
- 3 – The Process approach? Quesaco?
This is the part that requires the most thought, because it requires taking a step back from how your business operates.
The process approach is an analysis method which consists of:
- To methodically describe a project, an action, or other…
- In order to act on it
- In order to intelligently deploy the skills of its staff
- To create added value
Mapping your company's processes allows you to understand how your company creates added value in order to optimize its performance.
The processes operate in a correlated manner, that is, they interact with each other.
So for an action, 3 processes need to be mapped:
The implementation process: the action to be carried out
The steering process: the company's management processes: quality policy, customer orientation, communication, etc.
The Support Process: provide resources: human, budget, standards, documents, etc.
Let’s take as an example the project to implement Quality Management within Quotex:
- 4 – 7 principles of Quality Management: Actions
Now let's return to simpler concepts.
ISO Quality Management standards are based on 7 principles:
5 – Keep cool
With a little practice, the first signs of improvement will quickly be felt.
These tools are not adapted to emergencies, but will allow you to implement preventive, curative and corrective actions to easily manage crises.
The smaller the company, the more targeted your improvement actions will be so as not to get bogged down in details.
You now know how to easily implement some Quality Management principles.
If you are won over by these management tools, you can decide to have yourself audited and certified ISO 9001: some companies only work with certified companies…
Laury Bonnet
