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Your QMS – Managing Common Mistakes
Episode 15 – Your QMS – Managing Common Mistakes
Your QMS – Managing Common Mistakes
In the podcast episode, Brian Smith, the Director of Consulting Services at Core Business Solutions, shares his expertise in managing a quality management system (QMS). He emphasizes the need for leadership commitment and integration of the QMS into the company’s operations and he highlights the importance of employee engagement, communication, and continuous improvement.
Core Business Solutions publishes ISO Certification podcast episodes weekly. You can find more episodes here.
Episode 15 -Your QMS – Managing Common Mistakes Key Content
That’s great to hear. Today’s show is entitled You’re Doing It All Wrong, where we discuss common mistakes that are made when managing a quality management system. But first off, while Brian has been here before, let’s learn a little bit more about him. So like I said, I’m the director of consulting services here at CORE, and I’ve been with Core going on six years and had a 25-year law enforcement career, and the large majority of that was in prison industries.
Oh, wow. And so you got you got to have them do all the license plates.
No. Yeah, we made furniture.
Oh, you made furniture.
That’s my background. We had to be ISO-certified in our factories to deal with the military and some of the government agencies. And it got us out of a lot of government inspections that cert. And most of our listeners can appreciate that.
It keeps customers happy to have that cert. So that’s where I got my start in ISO back around 2000 and I’ve implemented some of the new versions of the standard, the 9001 standard, or some of the others.
That’s great. Well, we’re certainly glad you’re here and you’ve got a wealth of knowledge and experience, so that’s always good to hear and see. I know you’ll bring that to us today. So let’s set the scene. The company is ISO certified and they have been for a little while now, but they feel like they aren’t seeing the results they hoped for and they’re making mistakes with the quality management system.
One of the first mistakes you can make is leadership, not owning that quality management system. How can a company combat that lack of leadership and commitment in the company’s quality management system?
Well, there are two ways to look at it. Generally, top management is not separated from the quality management system. The quality management system is separated from top management.
So it’s something you’ve brought in and it’s sort of an add-on and it’s not ingrained yet.
I see a lot of that where people think, Oh, it’s ISO, we got it. It’s something else we have to do. And you know, that’s where you have to keep it clear. ISO is not your quality management system, it’s a framework for your quality management system. And if your leadership is divorced from the quality management system, you’re not going to have a company for very long. It doesn’t happen that way. So from the beginning, it’s really important that top management start the project of becoming ISO compliant or certified and that they have the influence on the project right up front. And from our side of it, from your consultant side, we must show you right away how they match up that this ISO 9001 standard is just a framework. It doesn’t tell you how to do anything.
Right and let you make those decisions.
Exactly. The newest version, the 2015 version, is pretty drastically different from than old versions. There was a lot of stuff in the old versions that people in business and people in the industry just shook their heads and couldn’t see value in. And I was one of them.
Like, why are we doing this?
Exactly. And this last version, when I first saw it, I kind of shook my head and said, finally, I can use this now as a tool, this framework. And I’ve concluded that if you’re missing part of the 9001 standard, you’re probably losing money.
Mm hmm. That makes sense. So? So basically, the leadership needs to incorporate it into what it’s already doing. We’re already doing some of the stuff. Let’s get credit for it. Add a few things to make it compliant.
Exactly. And that’s that’s the that’s one of the keys to starting a project is identifying what processes procedures or functions you have in place already that meet the standard. There’s no sense in changing it unless you want to. Yeah, it meets the standard, but we kind of like to go about it differently. It’s not effective. So if you’re meeting the standard, you may not call it the same thing. The standard does, but it’s important to link that up. So you’re not reinventing the wheel and it doesn’t become something else.
I think next week we’re going to be talking with Suzanne Strasser about how to kind of incorporate it into what you’re already doing. Maybe just have to add minutes, you know, or have a few action items that come out of it to have it meet the requirement of the standard. But you’re already doing what you’re doing. So that’s one way to keep leadership in charge and take ownership of the quality management system. Next is overcomplicating the quality management system. How do you keep from overcomplicating yours?
Yeah, the key that I’ve found is, you know, fundamentally ISO 9001 is identifying your business risks, measuring them, and then using that measurement data to drive your actions to mitigate risk or leverage opportunity. I usually start with top management on that and ask them, What are you measuring now?
And that can have a twofold benefit. First of all, I’ve engaged top management right away. Because if they’re measuring something, they see it as a risk or an opportunity they just don’t call it that. They don’t call it What’s that same thing the standard does? That’s for me, that’s the first step in engagement and showing them that this is a structure to benefit your mission. And the other benefit to that is I’ve seen this several times when middle management finds out what the CEO is measuring and sees as a risk, they didn’t know. They didn’t know that that was an issue. I don’t see that very often. But all of a sudden you don’t just have a certificate. Now you’ve you’ve made a huge communication breakthrough in your company.
You’re talking to people about these things exactly where you weren’t.
Yeah. You know, we talk about engaging top management, finding out what they’re worried about, the issues they’re worried about and what they’re measuring, the data they’re collecting to me is the first is the first step to bring it that in.
So basically you’re talking about monitoring it, analyzing it, and taking action. That’s that’s how you keep it simple, those three things.
Yep.
And that’s like 90% of the standard in cases.
Sure identify it. You know, these are inherent issues that are never going to go away. They may be able to accept that risk. There are business risks, dozens of them, that we accept daily. It’s the ones that are close, like, do we put the resources on this? Is the outcome the benefit going to be worth it, or do we just accept this risk? Well, those that the gray area is why you want to collect the data. Because the data will tell you whether or not to take action. And I tell this to all my clients, deciding not to take an action is an action. And documented. We’ve studied this and we decided we can accept this risk for now we’re going to keep an eye on it.
Yep. Yep. You’re being intentional. At least you know what you’re doing. You’re deciding to or not to.
Right. And that that’s the core that. No pun intended. Yeah. Continuous improvement, customer satisfaction, and all the other requirements of the standard of the 9001 standards support that.
Yeah. That’s what makes total sense. Makes total sense. So you mentioned it a little bit, but one of the other issues can be employee engagement. Yeah, sometimes keeping them engaged is a struggle. You said it does have to come from the top down, but what are some other ways to keep them involved?
That can be a challenge. We’ve talked about engaging middle management with, you know, top management mission. And coming to a common approach to risk mitigation and realizing opportunities. So we’ve got to take it further that that’s a big step as top management, and middle management’s on the same page going the same way. That sounds like it would be easy, but it often isn’t. Now we do get to a spot in most businesses that are successful. These risks aren’t going to be prominent. And the solutions or the mitigation actions aren’t going to be obvious. And so usually those ideas come from the people on the floor, pushing the buttons, turning the screw.
So you’ve got to get them engaged.
You have to.
How do you do that?
You know communication that’s that’s the most, you know, overused term we have. But it’s finding a way to engage. I’ve found a lot of value in, you know, having periodic meetings. Usually, whatever works for you, either before or after your management review or your management meetings, your operations meetings to not only just feed them the data, like this is what we’re measuring. And this is because, you know, when you’re doing audits, you run into people on the floor and you ask them, you know, what’s the objective target? And I’ve heard this answer so many times. I don’t know. But I know we made it right.
We’re doing it. I don’t know what it is, but.
Well, yeah, because if they didn’t make it, they knew exactly what the number was. Right. And that’s okay. What I found value in was asking them for their feedback on the metrics. I had this happen. I said earlier I was in prison industries, and I had a pretty large work cell about 70 inmates working in that work. So. And I had a meeting with them about some of the data results for the quarter. And, you know, inmates usually aren’t shy and a couple of them stepped up and said, you’re measuring a wrong thing. That means nothing to us. You know, swallowed my pride a little bit and started measuring what they told me to, even if I didn’t agree. The biggest thing that happened right there is they took ownership of it. Now they drew a line in the sand and said, We’re going to make this metric.
You give them a little bit of ownership and then accountability.
Exactly. Accountability follows that kind of engagement. It’s a culture. And it takes a little bit of work. And not every employee is going to want to play. But it’s a really good way to recognize young talent. Where people do want to engage, you know, and not say what’s in it for me. They just want to engage and improve. And you do have to communicate. That’s a two-way communication with the people that are providing the service and manufacturing. Turning the wrenches.
That makes sense. It makes sense. All right. So lastly, continuous improvement. What steps can we take and what does a standard require to help keep your quality management system continually improving?
Well, you know, it is a lot of what we talked about earlier and in getting for real. You know, I’ve asked that when I start a project with a customer, a lot of times I’ll ask them what they want to improve. And I’ve heard some clients say nothing. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I just need the certificate.
That happens. You know, we’re good. You know, we kind of jokingly call this You’re doing everything wrong. No one’s doing everything wrong. There are these little trips that can hold you up. But it is about, you know, utilizing the standard. Take it for what it’s worth. It’s not a pain to do the calibration. It’s not. I mean, it’s work to keep a document control system functional. But the benefits are going to be an improvement. Once you knock something down, once you eliminate the root cause, and we don’t have to deal with that anymore, you’re going to see your numbers and you’re profitable with your margins creeping up.
But I think the biggest key is what we just talked about is culture. Organization-wide. We always talk about being top-driven. It has to be top-driven quietly. And then you flip it and let it be bottom-driven. This is what we need. You know, here at CORE, Scott defines our, you know, our risks with input and defines them. It’s what we talked about this morning. About sustainability. That has to be communicated to people on the floor. They may have chosen to work on a machine for 30 years, but everybody inherently wants to do the best job that they can.
It’s their time. So hey, let me be productive with my time. I want to do a good job.
Yeah. Do you know how many times I’ve heard what no one asked? Yeah, I think it’s frustrating, but what we can do is ask.
Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s getting top management leadership, to communicate it to the general workers and let them run with it.
Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s the leadership management paradigm, I guess. You know, leadership is high up the on the scaffolding pointing. You know, middle management is down in the jungle pointing, but it’s the people with the machetes that have to that are going to get us to our goal. They have a lot of insight that we don’t tap.
Yeah. And that communicating and engaging them will help you tap that. Well, that is helpful. Do you have any, again, with all your experience, you did share one, but do you have any other experience or stories about someone who was struggling with their quality management system, but turned it around into the asset it should be?
Well, I’ve been involved in several projects, small and large companies, where just the structure, you know, when they got over that ISO stuff, well, we got to do that for hire. So and sometimes I put but there is no ISO stuff. This is your quality management system. We’re just using ISO to structure it and when that realization is made, that’s when I do see a lot of progress.
That’s great to hear. That’s great to hear. So use it. Don’t just follow it. That’s awesome. Well, thanks again. It’s been great listening to you talk about how to get your arms around and consider it as a framework. We do. Thank you for being here.
Glad
to be here.
They’re not going to see the head nod.
Thumbs up, thumbs up emoji.
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