Seven quality management principles

Principle 3: People’s commitment

Every company is as good as its employees, including its managers. Thus, committed individuals shape the nature and actions of your organization at all levels. Therefore, it is important that all acting individuals are competent, empowered and committed to living your organization’s activities and values. This, in turn, improves the ability to create value. Involving them in decision-making, recognizing their individual achievements and promoting their skills and knowledge are therefore signs of leadership focused on effectiveness and efficiency. To achieve this, it is necessary to encourage the commitment and involvement of committed individuals at all levels.

So give special consideration to

• Human resources planning
• Recruitment procedures and the induction of new employees
• Competencies and systematic training and development
• Active participation, for example at idea exchanges

What can you achieve?

• Greater responsibility of your employees and teamwork
• Higher employee satisfaction and retention
• Direct and indirect effect on customer retention and loyalty of your customers

Principle 4: Process-oriented approach

The fourth of the seven principles of quality management is about the process-oriented approach. The QM standard thus calls for comprehensively documented process management, for all relevant processes of your company or organization. This is because only a good understanding of relevant processes, as well as their control and interactions, enables a company to optimize its performance and achieve its intended goals. To this end, the individual process steps must be defined, inputs and outputs determined, and interfaces with the company’s functions identified. Finally, potential sources of error must be identified and responsibilities defined to ensure that processes run smoothly. The identification of “performance indicators” for process control (including suitable key performance indicators) is also another significant requirement. In this way, desired results can be achieved more effectively and efficiently.

Note: A process is a chain of interrelated and mutually influencing activities that transforms inputs into outputs.

What does the process-oriented approach to quality management encompass?

For companies and organizations, this means that processes, their sequence and interactions, including the associated boundary conditions, such as resources, must be clearly defined. This may involve:

• Customers and external providers (suppliers)
• Input sources, for example from upstream processes
• Input, what is being worked with
• Process flow and necessary resources
• Process owners
• Planned results and recipients
• Risks and opportunities
• Measurement and performance indicators

Principle 5: Improvement

“If you stop getting better, you have stopped being good.” Behind this simple statement is the realization that competence and quality are not static but dynamic variables. Thus, the challenge is always to maintain and improve performance levels. In doing so, it is crucial to keep abreast of internal and external changes and to react to them in order to create new opportunities. This applies equally to the company and to the people working there. Therefore, it is important for sustainable business success to focus on continuous improvement. In this way, a company stabilizes its performance, can respond appropriately to changes in both internal and external conditions and creates the best conditions for itself to identify new opportunities.

Actively use these opportunities to identify risks and opportunities and initiate continuous improvements in the QM system:

• Pool sources of improvement, including customer feedback, audits, and process evaluations.
• Use employee feedback, including ideas, workplace improvements
• Market monitoring, especially other industries and technological changes
• Targeted programs for improvement and innovation
• Maintaining and further expanding knowledge within your organization