Friday 23 September 2016

Planning As Tool For Effective QMS

Definition

Systematic process that translates quality policy into measurable objectives and requirements, and lays down a sequence of steps for realizing them within a specified timeframe.

Companies want to produce quality work that they're happy with and customers can appreciate. One way to do so is a process known as quality planning. Come along as we learn what quality planning is, the process, and what tools are valuable in the ISO 9001 certification,



Quality Planning Defined

Meet Molly. Molly just found out that she will be the new leader for an upcoming project. Because this is her first project, she decides to do some research on how to effectively lead a project. The first place she starts is by determining the most important aspects of the project; essentially, she is determining which standards are necessary in order to successfully complete the project. Molly learns that she needs to identify what standards are relevant to the project and how she and her team will meet them. This is known as quality planning and is the focus of this lesson.

Quality planning is the task of determining what factors are important to a project and figuring out how to meet those factors. Such factors often include the resources that will be used, the steps needed to complete the project and any other specifications. So for Molly, this means she needs to plan what resources the project will need, determine the cost of those resources, plan a timeline for completing the project, outline the steps she and her team will take, and she will need to assign the tasks and responsibilities to each person.

 Process

“Quality planning,” as used here, is a structured process for developing products (both goods and services) that ensures that customer needs are met by the final result. The tools and methods of quality planning are incorporated along with the technological tools for the particular product being developed and delivered. Designing a new automobile requires automotive engineering and related disciplines, developing an effective care path for juvenile diabetes will draw on the expert methods of specialized physicians, and planning a new approach for guest services at a resort will require the techniques of an experienced hotelier. All three need the process, methods, tools, and techniques of quality planning to ensure that the final designs for the automobile, diabetic care, and resort services not only fulfill the best technical requirements of the relevant disciplines but also meet the needs of the customers who will purchase and benefit from the products.

The Quality Planning Problem

The quality planning process and its associated methods, tools, and techniques have been developed Because in the history of modern society, organizations have rather universally demonstrated a consistent failure to produce the goods and services that unerringly delight their customers. As a customer, everyone has been dismayed time and time again when flights are delayed, radioactive contamination spreads, medical treatment is not consistent with best practices, a child’s toy fails to function, a new piece of software is not as fast or user-friendly as anticipated, government responds with glacial speed (if at all), or a home washing machine with the latest high-tech gadget delivers at higher cost clothes that are no cleaner than before. These frequent, large quality gaps are really the compound result of a number of smaller gaps illustrated in Figure 3.1. The first component of the quality gap is the understanding gap, that is, lack of understanding of what the customer needs. Sometimes this gap opens up because the producer simply fails to consider who the customers are and what they need. More often the gap is there because the supplying organization has erroneous confidence in its ability to understand exactly what the customer really needs. The final perception gap in Figure 3.1 also arises from a failure to understand the customer and the customer needs. Customers do not experience a new suit of clothes or the continuity in service from a local utility simply based on the technical merits of the product. Customers react to how they perceive the good or service provides them with a benefit.

3.2 SECTION THREE

The second constituent of the quality gap is a design gap. Even if there were perfect knowledge about customer needs and perceptions, many organizations would fail to create designs for their goods and services that are fully consistent with that understanding. Some of this failure arises from the fact that the people who understand customers and the disciplines they use for understanding customer needs are often systematically isolated from those who actually create the designs. In addition, designers—whether they design sophisticated equipment or delicate human services—often lack the simple tools that would enable them to combine their technical expertise with an understanding of the customer needs to create a truly superior product. The third gap is the process gap. Many splendid designs fail because the process by which the physical product is created or the service is delivered is not capable of conforming to the design consistently time after time. This lack of process capability is one of the most persistent and bedevilling failures in the total quality gap. The fourth gap is the operations gap. The means by which the process is operated and controlled may create additional deficiencies in the delivery of the final good or service. ISO 9001 consultants can provide cost effective guidance and play an important role in the quality management System




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