ISO9

ISO recognizes that an effective quality program requires the involvement and commitment of your organization’s top management. The ISO Standard begins by assigning top management with the responsibility of the following:

Overseeing the creation of the Quality Management System (QMS)

Communicating with all responsible parties

Making sure there are adequate resources committed to the operation of the QMS

Reviewing to make sure the QMS is in fact operating as planned

Top management should make sure that the QMS identifies customer requirements in each important area of service or product delivery. The QMS should work to make sure that these customer requirements are fulfilled. The goal of the QMS should be to improve customer satisfaction.

The quality policies identify the main goals of the QMS and explain why an organization is adopting them. A organization's quality policy can be a very simple statement of the broad goals of the organization and the party responsible with ensuring these goals are met, or it can be a more detailed document that defines the goals, objectives and responsible parties of each area that the ISO 9000 Standard impacts. In order to conform to the standard, a quality policy must ensure it performs the following:

Appropriate to your organization’s purpose

Communicated throughout the organization

Reviewed for suitability

Strives to improve its effectiveness

Complies to customer requirements

Ensure measurable and consistent quality objectives are established and communicated throughout your organization.

Why do we plan? We plan so that desired goals are achieved. Basically, that is what this element of the standard states. Make sure that your QMS addresses and achieves the goals that you have set, and make sure that as you continually improve and change your QMS that you are still consistent with your goals: continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.

ISO recognizes that effective communication and management requires that everyone know what their responsibilities are and whom they report to. To accomplish this goal, it is important that your QMS identifies responsible parties and describes how much authority they have. Sometimes, it may not be clear that the responsible party does not have the authority to make necessary changes. These types of situations should be identified.

Your organization will need to appoint someone who will have operational responsibility for your QMS. This individual is referred to as the Management Representative. The duties that a Management Representative will have with respect to the QMS will include:

Ensuring that processes needed for your QMS are established, implemented

and maintained

Reporting on the performance of the QMS and improvements needed

Promoting awareness of customer requirements throughout your organization

Your organization will need to set up an effective system of communication between management and employees with respect to your QMS. You should discuss QMS requirements and objectives and what have been specific accomplishments or problems in the process. The system will also need to allow for feedback from the employees to management.

As previously mentioned, top management has the responsibility to make sure that the QMS is operating effectively. The best plan in the world would still need to be monitored to make sure that it was working properly. To monitor the QMS, top management will have to review certain aspects of the QMS to make sure that the goals are being achieved and to look for ways to improve the QMS. These meetings need to be documented as to when they took place and what was discussed.

Regularly scheduled management review meetings should be held. These meetings should address the following areas:

Internal audit results

Customer feedback

How processes and products have been measuring up

Status of previously identified problems

Items identified for follow-up in previous management reviews

Planned process or product changes that could affect quality

Recommendations for improvement generated through the operation of the QMS

Employee feedback or previous management meetings

After management review meetings are held, there should be follow up actions taken if, as a result of the meetings, top management decided that the effectiveness of the QMS can be improved. These improvements could mean that customer requirements could be better evaluated or better met, or that there is a need for additional resources to support the QMS.