What Is the Meaning of a Quality Management System?
The goal of most business organizations is to make a profit and earn financial returns for their financially vested stakeholders. Selling goods and services to consumers is the most common way companies can earn profits. However, the economic market is full of competition, which can make it difficult to gain market share from a potentially limited amount of consumers. To gain a competitive advantage, many companies will implement a quality management system to ensure they produce the best products possible.
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Facts
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A quality management system is a set of processes, tasks and activities that employees must follow to consistently produce products at the lowest cost possible without disrupting consumer expectations. Different companies face different quality management issues. While manufacturing and production companies need consistency from the production line, retail companies will often focus on customer service and product displays for quality management.
Principles
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According to the International Organization for Standardization, a few important quality management principles include customer focus, leadership, involvement of staff, process and systems approach, continual improvement, factual approach to decision making and mutually beneficial supplier relationships. This list encompasses all levels of an organization from the top level of management to employees to external companies used to acquire economic resources.
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Function
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Quality management systems can focus on primary and secondary business operations. Primary operations focus on the activities that directly produce products; secondary operations can include accounting, maintenance, technical support and customer service. Instilling the quality management principles in these secondary operations can help the company improve its customer focus. Maintenance ensures the production equipment runs smoothly, accounting accurately helps price products and customer service takes care of positive and negative feedback.
Considerations
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Business owners and managers may need to implement a review system to ensure their quality management system does not become a random or meaningless process. While hiring or creating a quality management department can help control quality, an objective review can enhance the overall quality system. Companies can use external auditors to audit the quality management system to verify that the system adequately manages and improves product quality.
Misconceptions
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Using a quality management system is not something that can fix a company's problems overnight. Quality management typically requires the consistent training of employees and reviewing of operational procedures. Not only will these take time to implement, but it can also lead to more time to make the necessary changes for improving quality. Companies may also spend more money to improve quality, creating higher operating costs.
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