Archive for June 29th, 2009
What is A Quality Policy?
Section 4.1.1 of the ISO 9001 standard requires that management “shall define and document its policy for quality, including objectives for quality and commitment to quality . . .” It goes on to say that the policy “shall be relevant to the supplier’s organizational goals and the expectations and needs of its customers.”
what is a quality policy? It is a concise document that defines organizational goals and objectives with regard to your overall quality management system, a commitment to meeting stated requirements, and an undertaking to drive continuous improvement throughout the organisation’s activities. It must be suitable for the organisation and provide a framework for establishing, communicating, and monitoring performance against agreed quality objectives.
One may ask, Why write a quality policy? If you have a quality policy it can formally demonstrate your commitment to comply with legislation, international standards, and meeting customer requirements. It sets a benchmark for your organization, so that you can measureyour own performance. If such commitments are informal, then your organisation as well as the senior management cannot be held to account! So what does your quality policy say about you?
How has your organization satisfied this requirement? We would like to know so we can use your success as a good example to others.
What are Quality Objectives?
Quality Objectives are the practical outline of the Quality Policy. They are an expression to aim for meeting certain requirements like zero defects for a certain product or a response time below a specified limit for a certain service.
Quality objectives should be measurable, and should be relevant to the various functions within your company. When thinking about what your quality objectives should be, try to think about what ways you want your company to improve your customers’ satisfaction. A good quality objective should include where you are at present state, where you wish to be in the future and when you plan to complete the objective. Example: “We will improve our on time delivery from 85% to 98% by December 2009″.
Quality objectives should be written specifically for your company, and should be relevant to your particular situation.
Quality objectives can be achieved by continual improvement of your organization. The value of having an ISO9001-2008 quality management system is that you should be continually improving your operation.
What are some of your objectives and how have you measured your success?
We’d like to hear your comments on this post.