(ISO) Quality Manual Chat

ISO9001:2000 section 4.2 states the requirement to have a documented quality policy. Cynical people might look at the quality policy as a bunch of horse dung. And lord knows I’ve seen quite a few companies that don’t take any part of their quality system seriously. So its not surprising that some folks might not take their quality policy to heart.

Unfortunately, in many companies the quality policy is effectively meaningless. Empty words written just to be in compliance with the standard.

Part of the reason why you need a wll written quality policy is to make your employees understand that their job affects product quality, and therefore the success or failure of the company. Your people must be made aware that their individual contribution is vitally important to the company’s overall success.

If your quality policy is simply written to satisfy the requirements of ISO9001:2000, then it might be worthless. You should keep it simple and keep it relevant to your organization. Make it meaningful to the people in your organization.

Your quality policy can also be thought of as making a commitment to quality. If management doesn’t take it seriously, then employees won’t either. However if management demonstrates an actual willingness to improve product quality without throwing people under a bus, then maybe the employees will also get on board.

In many cases the quality policy is just a bunch of words that management agonizes over to get the wording just right. It gets printed in your quality manual, posted on some walls, and then it is promptly forgotten about. Until the next audit, that is.

Your people don’t need a bunch of fancy hogwash to know what good quality is. Everyone knows when your quality policy isn’t worth the paper its printed on. It is up to management to show everyone the way by their actions, not merely by their words.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 11th, 2007 at 6:03 am and is filed under General quality system, ISO9001:2000 blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.