How to Improve Your Company’s Quality Management System
The consistency and continual improvement of quality is the key to a successful business of any size. Having an exceptional Quality Management System (QMS) in place that is constantly evolving is important for company growth, but it is also essential that your employees are actively implementing this system for this to work. How can you improve your company’s QMS?
- Evaluate and Analyze your current QMS. What do you and your employees like and dislike about the current system? Is your system meeting the needs of all workers? It is important to receive constant feedback from everyone involved to continually improve the system and use it to its fullest potential. Evaluate and compare the work being accomplished vs. what has the potential to be accomplished. Track all mistakes but do not dwell on your company’s flaws, just simply eliminate processes that do not bring value to your company.
- Make a commitment to improve. Edward Deming, the father of quality management, argued that quality must come from the top and be reinforced over and over again. The strong quality processes you start off with in the beginning of a new quarter should not weaken as it comes to an end. Committing to improve the system needs to start at the top and your employees should in turn reciprocate your effort.
- Invest in training for everyone. Your QMS will be unsuccessful if you leave it up to a single individual or department to make sure that the quality of your company is reaching its full potential. Training all employees in all levels of the company is beneficial in finding new and innovative ways to improve and eliminate potential problems within every department. Invest time and money in training new employees and retraining existing employees. If you have high expectations for your company’s growth; training will be worth it in the long run.
- Keep it consistent. Quality improvement is a recurring, continual process that needs to be consistent throughout the company. Break down the barriers between different departments. If a fraction of your employees go above and beyond in customer service and another subset of the company does the bare minimum, there is a clear issue. The values and processes that your company establishes needs to be consistent and actively implemented each day. If there is a change in your QMS, it should be a change throughout the entire company.
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