Ten Reasons Why At Times The Quality Management System Does Not Work

Ten Reasons Why At Times The Quality Management System Does Not Work By Mrs. Susan Lubega, ISO 9000 Lead Auditor Programmes Coordinator Quality Assur...
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Ten Reasons Why At Times The Quality Management System Does Not Work

By Mrs. Susan Lubega, ISO 9000 Lead Auditor Programmes Coordinator Quality Assurance and Management Consultants ISO 9001 is a standard which provides guidance on the issues to be addressed in developing a quality management system within an organization. From their inception in 1987, the ISO 9000 series have become popular both internationally and locally for organizations looking to improve internal operations to fully satisfy customer demands and bring efficiency. Today being certified to ISO 9001 has become a symbol of prestige and a representation of best practices, be it in the service or manufacturing industry. However, in spite of the series’ popularity today, there are schools of thought that believe that the series have been highly overrated and that they don’t bring the benefits raved about ie: increase in sales and market share, efficiency and effectiveness in production, improved products to mention but a few. This article attempts to examine the various reasons as to why this may be the case. Quality Management Systems, in some organizations have been a complete success whereas in others they have been a complete failure. Below are some reasons for the failure of quality management systems. 1. Lack of Strategic Fit The term ‘strategic fit’ at its simplest level refers to the ability of new ideas, tactics, activities, etc to fit in with the overall strategic goals of the organization. ISO 9001 promotes meeting customer requirements at all levels of the organization, therefore, it would not go down very well with an organization that has survived for a long time by copying what the competitors are doing or by providing their perception of what the customers require. The former would be closely monitoring their competitors and reacting to what they are doing whereas the latter company would be inward looking in the sense that they would be reacting to the perceived customer demands derived from feedback of sales people who are usually in contact with the distributors and not the end users of the product and the personal experiences of the company personnel. To illustrate the importance of ‘strategic fit’ let us look closely at what goes within each of these companies A

B

C

Company Using Benchmarking As A Strategy Closely following competition

Company relying on ISO 9001 Certified feedback from Company internal personnel Strategic Level Closely getting Doing customer surveys; feedback from sales personnel and other internal personnel Devising plans for out Acting on the Understanding what the doing the competition information given. customers want. Implementation Designing products and Designing products and Designing and Level services that are better services that meet the developing products and than the competitions’. criteria as laid out by services that the personnel. customers want Putting in place systems to Putting in place Putting in place systems ensure that these products systems to ensure that to ensure that these products are consistently are produced consistently. these products are produced consistently. produced. Testing the products on the market Improving the products as recommended by the customers. Marketing and selling the products. Whereas there is a similarity in the activities undertaken by each of these companies, the objectives are quite different. Therefore implementing the quality management system in either company A or B would be difficult for the simple reason that the skills that would have been developed and perfected in these companies ie: spying on competitors or getting feedback from internal personnel would have no place in the quality management system. Therefore in the absence of clear guidance on how to operate differently, staff would continue doing what they are used to and generally conclude that the quality management system is a management whim that can run concurrently with their tried and proven tactics. To address this problem, companies have to ensure that the implementation of a quality management system is in alignment with their overall business strategy. This would require a formal review of the strategy by management and ensuring alignment of the two. Thereafter, there would be need to ensure that the systems, personnel and structures support the strategy 2. Organisational Structures Which Do Not Support The Changes Brought In By The QMS Those who may have implemented a quality management system would attest to the fact that:

- they usually unveil responsibilities that may not have been delegated and; - bring additional tasks. Under the circumstances the best way of handling this situation would be to reorganise and re-distribute the new tasks and ensure that all the various roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and assigned. However, this is not the approach that is commonly taken. Companies usually choose to retain the existent structure and lump the additional tasks to any willing but unsuspecting victim without looking at the remuneration factor. With time this causes disgruntlement and the work not to be done at all. In other cases the work is shoddily done. Also, when this approach is taken, no attention is paid to the sequential work flow which eventually compromises the effectiveness of the QMS. 3. Lack of Participation of Personnel In Uganda, most quality management systems were created by one or two people who had the technical knowledge on the subject with some input from management. As a result other members of staff who are usually responsible for the implementation feel that the system is owned by the people who created it. It is usually referred to as ‘so and so’s’ system because these staff members don’t clearly see where they fit in and therefore fail to positively contribute to the betterment of the system. They just follow it. For a system to be successful it is important that stakeholder (managers, supervisors, line production staff) buy in is got right from the start. This can be got by: a) Communicating to all staff members what is going to be done in this case implementing a quality management system; why it is to be implemented ; and the likely benefits to be accrued. This communication should preferably come from top management. b) Defining the changes to be introduced by the system and the impact that these changes would have on the way people work. c) The contributions to success that would be required at each level. d) Clear statement of how everybody will know if the project is successful. 4. Empowerment of Personnel The skills existent in the organization are at times not good enough to support the quality management system. To implement a quality management system skills are required in planning, managing and controlling operations, monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of operations and taking the necessary corrective actions. In the absence of these skills the system can only be partly functional.

The best way of addressing this problem is to initially undertake a skills audit which would help to identify the existent skills and those that are lacking. Thereafter, a plan can be developed on how the skills gaps can be bridged ie: how personnel can be empowered. Likely interventions may include but certainly would not be limited to training, coaching, mentoring to mention but a few. 5. Communication Absence of communication on the progress of the quality management system, key successes, implementation challenges and lessons learned can be compared to moving in a rudderless boat. At any one time this boat may be hit by waves (which usually come in the form of pessimism) which may take the boat completely off course. Early successes when communicated early serve to keep the boat on course and give momentum. Challenges openly communicated with practical solutions serve to motivate others in similar situations and the lessons learned serve to warn others on how to circumnavigate problems. Communication channels that can be established for the above purposes include: in-house help lines, on line help, newsletters, formal review meetings, internal memos and notice board communication. 6. Leadership The kind of leadership required in this case is the one that encourages participation from all the implementers NOT the authoritative kind of leadership. The latter is the most common but it usually kills personal initiative and positive contribution to the success of the system. As far as the quality management system is concerned, leaders must be able to define the quality policy, set objectives at the functional level which are aligned to the quality policy, clearly define and assign roles and responsibilities, avail and control the resources necessary for implementation, train and develop personnel and generally continually monitor progress and initiate improvements where necessary. In a nut shell the leaders determine the course to be taken by the company and provide the support necessary for the implementers to tread on that course. 7. Monitoring and Evaluation The products of monitoring and evaluation are basically objective evidence that the quality management system is implemented and is effective. If this is absent then people tend to forget why it was crucial to implement the system in the first place.

Monitoring and evaluation promotes continual improvement of the system as it provides a formal forum for review of progress which in turn reveals areas of weakness and provides opportunities for the management body to devise remedial actions. In order to ensure that monitoring and evaluation happens it is imperative that: - At the very beginning the ‘current situation’ within the organization is clearly defined and documented; - The changes to be ushered in by the quality management system be clearly defined and documented together with the objectives; - When this is done, the next step would be to clearly define how everybody will be able to tell that the change has been successfully implemented. This would entail defining metrics / performance indicators which may be qualitative or quantitative in nature for example one of the requirements of ISO 9001 is monitoring the level of customer satisfaction which can only be got from the feedback from customers. Therefore, a feedback tool would have to be designed and put in place and thereafter, the level of customer satisfaction assessed by evaluating the responses on the feedback tool. Below are other examples of qualitative and quantitative parameters that can be used for measuring the performance of processes / functions in a quality management system. Process Delivery of products to customers Efficiency of the distribution network Production Efficiency

Customer satisfaction

Parameter Number of on-time deliveries Ratio of each distribution outlet to number of areas served Change over time Percentage of production time spent on repairing break-downs Percentage of defective products Number of repeat sales Speed of response to customer enquiries; Percentage of customer requirements that were not met

8. Adequate Resources It is a common fallacy that the actual cost of a quality management system comprises only the consultancy fees and the audit fees. In actual sense there are quite a number of expenses associated with quality management systems. They come in terms of:

- Improvements in infrastructure, equipment and support facilities; - Audit fees payable annually; - Consultancy fees; - Printing of stationery; - Training of personnel; - QMS maintenance costs; - Facilitation of the implementation process to mention but a few. Therefore in cases where the company does not have adequate resources to meet these various expenses the implementation of the quality management system can come to a stand still or worse still implementation may still go ahead but some activities may be left out. Sometimes these activities are crucial to the success of the whole project. Consequently the system is partially functional. To avoid this happening, it is important that a plan for implementing the system be laid out and all the activities in the plan be costed. When there is a budget assigned to the various activities then it is easy to assess whether there are enough resources to undertake the project and to maintain the system in the future. 9. Conflicts with the Existing Culture within the Organisation Culture is primarily the result of ‘management behaviour’ and the perceived values that underlie that behaviour. ISO 9001 systems encourage a culture of planning, doing, checking and acting. Therefore in organizations where fire-fighting is rampant there is never time to plan because management is often taken with solving one crisis after another. Thus the problem solving skills in the organisation would be highly developed, however, planning which is a problem preventing skill would be incompatible with the culture of an organization such as this. In order to change the status quo, management would have to start not only emphasing planning as the key to success in all operations but also walking the talk by organizing planning sessions, documenting, implementing and formally reviewing plans. Other organizational cultural issues which may cause contention include: - authoritative leadership versus participative leadership; - no investment in personnel because of the fear of people leaving and taking with them the knowledge and skills acquired versus development and empowerment of personnel; - one person doing everything because of lack of trust versus delegating responsibility, establishing the necessary controls and monitoring; - finding somebody to blame for things that go wrong versus working together to esolve the crisis; - punishing for mistakes made versus encouraging learning from mistakes;

- please the boss versus please the customer; - Individual versus the team. 10. Reluctance to commit to change at Management Level For any change to be successful, it must have the support of top management. There is the tendency of management to pretend that they support the change only to turn round and mention to subordinates their pessimism towards the proposed changes. This usually starts a tirade of rumours and works to build strong resistance to the change at the lower levels. It kills the momentum. It can only be compared to a heavy storm putting out a fire that had potential of gaining strength. Other examples include stating that the project has management support and then turning round and saying there are no resources to meet the expenses required or management stating that they will focus on customer satisfaction but not changing the reward system to ensure that those providing good customer service are adequately rewarded for it. All these are examples of a management that is not willing to walk the talk Therefore for a quality management system to be successful, management has to be consistent both in word and deed. References: Alan Weiss, 1990. Best Laid Plans: Turning Strategy into Action throughout the Organisation. United States of America: Las Brisas Research Press.