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Today’s competitive environment requires many businesses to register their quality management systems (QMS) to ISO 9001. Although debate on the overall effectiveness of registration continues, each year an increasing number of organizations seek it. So what’s significant about acquiring ISO 9001 registration? What makes the following case study about a nonprofit association achieving ISO 9001 registration particularly compelling?
What’s compelling is the “it can be done” spirit and the collective commitment of the management team and each employee to collaborate throughout the registration process. That was the path followed by this nonprofit, the Life Options, Vocational and Resource Center (LOVARC), which demonstrated a positive outlook, a truly compassionate effort, and a deep involvement in each stage of compliance to the standard. In fact, LOVARC embraces this work ethic every day supporting enlisted personnel at Vandenberg Air Force Base, located near Santa Barbara, in Lompoc, California. LOVARC manages a full food-service operation for the 30th Space Wing headquartered at Vandenberg, doing everything from receiving raw goods to preparing food and cleaning up.
The changing nature of today's health care organizations, including pressure
to reduce costs, improve the quality of care and meet stringent guidelines, has
forced health care professionals to re-examine how they evaluate their
performance. While many health care organizations have long recognized the need
to look beyond financial measures when evaluating their performance, many still
struggle with what measures to select and how to use the results of those
measures. Because a growing number of health care professionals have readily
adopted quality concepts, health care organizations should be able to quickly
improve their performance measurement systems by following a few simple
rules.
History
A brief look at the evolution of quality in modern health care systems may
help understand the need to improve performance measurement.
What is quality? An academic definition of quality as it relates to business might be that quality is a product or service that consistently has zero defects, conforms to particular specifications, and is satisfactorily received by the customer. Another aspect of quality is that it is a thought process sought out by organizations to create an overall drive toward efficiency, the reduction of waste, and the continual creation of more streamlined management processes.
“Unlike twenty years ago, when the quality department was viewed as the creator of quality, now the whole concept is more ingrained into the culture of organizations,” says Ron Atkinson, past president of the American Society for Quality. “Quality is created by the people performing the function, whether it be assembling a Bluetooth device or filling out an intake form at a medical clinic. Therefore, a culture of quality is emerging in which the leadership of organizations is emphasizing that the functional areas are responsible for quality in the same way that they are responsible for manpower costs, etc.”
Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 Consultants Directory, listing companies that provide quality consulting services.
Check the abbreviation key on page 48 for a preview of the services offered by each company. If additional information was provided to us, you’ll find it online at http://www.qualitydigest.com/content/buyers-guides. As always, we encourage you to contact these companies or visit their web sites.
Quality Digest hasn’t evaluated nor do we endorse any of the following companies listed in this directory.
We wish you well in finding a consultant for your specific needs.
Product integrity occurs when performance, schedule, and affordability converge throughout the product life cycle. The first critical stage in realizing product integrity happens early in the product life cycle during design and development; a second and no less critical stage occurs later, during the transition from development to production. Early in the process, the relationship between design intent and process capability must be established and understood. As the design matures and transitions to production, it must be manufactured in a repeatable and affordable way by an extended supply chain. Achieving these seemingly intuitive objectives continues to be elusive for much of the aerospace and defense industry.
So you have a customer complaint. It’s not just any complaint, but a huge one from your biggest customer. The problem affects millions of dollars in business and threatens the survival of your company. Are you going to take action? Of course! You put together a team of top players and attack it head-on.
Team members investigate the problem and perform a detailed 5-Why analysis. They start with the problem statement and ask, “Why did that happen?” repeatedly, drilling down deeper with each iteration:
Problem: There were seven data errors in reports issued to our largest customer in the last month
• Why? Because lab reports are getting in the wrong project folders.
• Why? Because the project numbers are written illegibly on the folders.
• Why? Because the customer service representatives are rushed when preparing folders.
• Why? Because there are only two representatives taking calls for all divisions.
For almost 100 years of our quality journey, we increasingly pampered our customers by giving them what they wanted. Customers now assume that quality is a given. Further, in our present information age, customers are more aware of competitive suppliers, as well as suppliers with poor performance. Quality performance has peaked globally, and the faces of quality have moved from the line worker to the corporate executive. Activities that improve quality hardly yield significant benefits anymore. So what else can be done to improve business performance and delight customers?
Three basic evaluation methods exist for any work activity: inspection, compliance auditing and management auditing. The first method, inspection, measures a process's output against certain characteristics. These characteristics, generally identified as form, fit and function, are specified, and the process output either possesses those characteristics or it doesn't. As a result, an inspection's outcome is always binary: pass or fail.
Welcome to Quality Digest’s 2008 ISO Standards Software Directory. The software that these companies create or distribute will help you to achieve or maintain registration to various quality standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The software products are designed to support the diverse needs of companies large and small, not only in compliance to standards, but in continuous improvement in areas of interest and industries such as: aerospace, analytical tools, benchmarking, consumer protection, corrective actions, customer satisfaction, data gathering, documentation management, energy, environmental issues, federal government agencies, going green, hazardous waste, health and safety, measurement process, process performance, return on investment, supply chains, value-adding methods, and more. If your needs concern any of these, take the time to contact these companies, and you may not need to look any further.
As with all of our directories, this guide is intended as a starting point to help readers choose the right solution for their needs. Quality Digest hasn’t evaluated, nor do we endorse, any of the products listed in this directory. Good luck finding the software solution to fit your needs.
