(ISO) Quality Manual Chat

What do you think of the practice of posting your company’s quality policy on signs posted around your office and/or plant? Do you do it? Do you think it helps your employees remember the quality policy? Would it help during an audit? Do your employees really care?

If your quality policy is brief and to the point, you might want to consider posting signs stating your quality policy around your office and plant. While no one would suggest that posting signs will cause your employees to suddenly start caring about a vague quality system that they’ve heard about, signs certainly don’t hurt your cause.

If you decide to post your actual quality policy as controlled in your ISO9001:2000 quality management system, you must make sure that any changes in your quality policy are immediately reflected on your signs. It’s probably not the best idea to frequently change your quality policy, but having signs up gives you a bit more work to do, if you decide to change your quality policy.

I’ve heard it suggested to post small signs at everyone’s desk, or put your quality policy on everyone’s computer as a screen saver. Frequent, small reminders of your company’s quality policy are a good thing, but don’t push it too far. Being too pushy with your preaching can turn people against you, and you don’t want that.

One company I’ve worked with has a fairly convoluted quality policy. It’s not easily remembered by English speaking personnel, and completely unintelligible to the Spanish speaking folks who constitute a large percentage of the workforce here in lovely Southern California. In this case I would not recommend posting signs stating the quality policy word for word. Instead I would post signs reminding everyone that the company strives to increase customer satisfaction, and we want to continually improve our quality.

During an ISO9001:2000 audit, I don’t expect company employees to repeat their company’s quality policy verbatim. If they can tell me the essence of their quality policy, in their own words, that’s good enough for me. And if the employee can give me a personal example of what the quality system means to them, or how it affects the way they do their job, so much the better.

During the planning stages of your ISO9001:2000 quality management syste, one of the fairly crucial decisions to make is choosing the management representative to the quality system.

OK, I’ll back up a bit.

Section 5.5 of our favorite quality standard covers “responsibility, authority and communication”. Your company’s management “shall” define and document who is responsible for the quality system, and “shall” properly communicate this throughout your organization.

You must choose who is going to be the “management representative” to the quality system. That is, who’s gonna be in charge of your quality system. So, who’s it gonna be?

A recent client, with no quality system experience whatsoever, had a bit of a struggle trying to figure out who should be in charge of the quality system. With only a dozen people in his company, and no one really in charge of quality, it wasn’t an easy decision.

If you have the type of company where quality is a serious issue, such as an aircraft parts company, medical devices, food products, that type of thing, well your choice is probably obvious. You probably already have someone in charge of quality, and this person is most likely the best person for the job.

If, say, you’re running a florist shop without a dedicated quality engineer, then your choice may not be so easy.

If your choice isn’t obvious, then your management representative to the quality system should be someone in your company who is smart, detail oriented, and not afraid to make a few waves. The company owner is probably not the best choice, although sometimes it might be the the only choice.

Your top management should appoint someone who has management authority, and can get things done. The management representative must have the ability and authority to establish, implement and maintain the quality sytem.

The management representative has the responsibility of reporting to top management on how the quality system is performing, recommending improvements, and promoting awareness of customer requirements to all members of your organization.

Being the management representative to the quality system is not necessarily a full time job. It may take only a few hours a month, depending on your particular situation.