Top 10 Things You Need From Your QMS

Editor's note: this transcript was generated by AI and has been lightly edited for clarity and relevance — some sections have been shortened or removed, and minor transcription errors corrected.

Full transcript

00:00:06Host

A quality management system is a key implementation in any organization. In this video, I'm going to explore the top 10 things that it simply must deliver to give maximum value and the best return on your investment.

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One: a central source of accurate information. Another way of putting this is a one-stop shop for all processes, policies, and procedures. There needs to be one place where the information is available, and it needs to be up to date with the latest, most accurate information.

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Two: an easy-to-understand, visual representation of your organization's processes. Reams and reams of text is difficult to go through. Making it visual helps it become easier to view and more interesting to use. So set out what is done in your organization in a visual format, such as process maps, then when it's needed, link to the text-based detail.

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Three: easy access. Make it as easy as possible for everyone in your organization to access the information they need. Put it in a central place. This is usually on your intranet.

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Four: easy navigation. Once inside the QMS, users want to find the information they need as quickly as possible. So your QMS must have an excellent search facility. The information flow must be intuitive, visual, and easy to follow.

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Five: identify responsibility and accountability as a minimum. A key aspect of a QMS is that it clearly identifies and advertises who is responsible and who is accountable for what actions. A full RACI — responsibility, accountability, consulted, and informed — is a bonus.

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Six: provide data at the process level with comprehensive reporting. As well as capturing your reporting on RACI, your QMS must be able to capture data for other key aspects of the business, such as risk and cost, and report intelligently on these.

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Seven: allow access via mobile devices for use when out of the office. We live in a mobile world. People work from home, at remote sites, whilst travelling. Your QMS must be accessible to them on differing mobile devices for those times.

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Eight: ISO accreditation and other regulatory compliance requirements relevant to your industry. Achieving regulatory accreditation is a key deliverable of any QMS. Making the compliance audits as straightforward as possible reduces the time taken and reduces the cost. Having one QMS to support your organization opens up the ability to have one organizational accreditation.

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Nine: be a model of your organization. Once your QMS contains all your organization's processes linked together to show the end-to-end view, it is, in fact, an as-is model of how your organization works. Once this is captured, it can be understood.

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Ten: provide the base point for modelling process improvement. Your as-is model of your organization is the start point for modelling to-be options. Your QMS must deliver the ability to make copies or clones and try out differing scenarios for process improvement.

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If your QMS is delivering on all 10 of these points, then your improvement focus stops becoming an approach and starts becoming a culture.