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How to handle objectives in your management system.

iso9001:2015 QHSE Quality

Objectives are pretty vital to the Management System. With objectives you can measure how the company is doing against a benchmark set by the company itself. Of course the company can do much better or worse. But, setting clear objectives is crucial in creating this benchmark. In line with the objectives are of course the KPI’s which you should setup and track.

How to come up with objectives

Most of you have probably been on this trajectory. Goals come back every year and you try to rephrase them every time to make them look new. Especially for companies with low environmental impact, limited risks to employees, or excellent customer satisfaction, creating new objectives can be hard. Where do you find new inspiration?

Look at other companies/competitors for objectives. A lot of companies place some management system related documents open on the web as part of their CSR program. You can find quite some potential KPI’s in these documents.

Look closely at your organization and try to pinpoint the crucial mistakes that are made. Set goals to goals these parts of the organization.

Last but not least, don’t make it too hard on yourself. Often you think too hard and too deep and you just can’t think of anything at all. The longer you have to think about an objective, the more you will get stuck. Just answer a simple question: what do you want to achieve at the end of the year(s)?

SMART

Make sure your objectives are described SMART in order to manage them.

  • Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
  • Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
  • Assignable – specify who will do it.
  • Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
  • Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

A clear description of the objectives is important in order to manage each objective. Also the assignability part is very important. When multiple people are responsible for an action, it can end up where nobody takes responsibility to complete the task and start to point towards each other.

Managing objectives

Try to not make the objectives an annual exercise. More often than not the data is just gathered at the end of the year and benchmarked against the goals. Please don’t apply this type of strategy. In order to really take advantage of goals you should manage them properly. This can be done by checking progress on a regular basis, every month for example. In order to set a good interval you should check the impact and the volatility of the data. For example, profits and revenues are measured on a monthly basis so calculating indicators based on this data on a daily basis isn’t very helpful.

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stakeholder analysis: ISO9001-2015

iso9001:2015 QHSE Quality

With the new ISO9001:2015 the stakeholder analysis has got a much more prominent position in the Quality management system. Of course, every company knows their most important stakeholders. However, not every stakeholder is always well understood or taken into consideration when major decisions are taken. A good stakeholder analysis gives the company an up to date list of all stakeholders and how to manage them.

Identify stakeholder

Identifying the most important stakeholders isn’t all that hard. Most companies have stakeholders like:

  • Customers
  • Suppliers
  • Employees
  • Government
  • Neighbors
  • Competitors
  • etc.

The list can get quite long depending on how specific you get.

Classification of stakeholders

The analysis becomes slightly harder when companies start to classify or order these stakeholders. It is important to give every stakeholder a type of ranking depending on how big the influence on the company is. Yes, customers are among the most important stakeholders but for example, what about the government? Companies that have a big impact on the environment have a different relationship with the government compared to a trading company. It is important to find out which stakeholders are most important. You can ask a question like “How easy is it for this stakeholder to close the doors of the company?”

Action plan

When the stakeholders are identified and classified, an action plan needs to be created on how to manage the different kind of stakeholders. The plan should include ways how the company will inform the stakeholders and regarding which activities every stakeholder is informed of. This can be structured in a communication plan, or very easily and straight forward in the analysis document. When some concrete actions need to be taken, make sure you always assign one single person as the owner of the task. This prevents people from pointing to each other when nothing is happening.

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ISO 9001 – Why get certified?

QHSE Quality

Why would any company comply with a standard apart from being forced by customers? One important reason is that quality is at the core of every organization. When an organization doesn’t deliver a high quality service or product, it won’t be in business very long. The ISO 9001 standard provides companies with guidance to keep quality consistent.

Customer Demand

Demand from the customer(s) should never be the main reason for implementing a quality management system, and neither should marketing. When this is the case, every effort for the system feels like a waste of time. A push from customers can be the trigger to implement a quality management system, but the main reason should come from within the company. The structure which comes with implementing ISO 9001 helps to align the organization.

Learning Company

Next to business continuity, ISO 9001 gives guidance for becoming a learning company. The continuous improvement methodology embedded in the standard focuses on identifying and reducing inefficiencies in internal and external processes. This way ISO 9001 provides companies with the right tools to figure out exactly which parts of the organization can be improved.

Rigid

A lot of people have the notion that the procedure makes the company rigid and less flexible. Although the written procedure should be followed by the employees, the procedure itself can be written in such a way that it leaves room to manoeuvre for employees. Besides, some slight rigidness isn’t all that bad especially when it comes to financial matters or quality of products and services. When you start to setup a new ISO 9001 management system it is important to be rigid in the procedure where there is no room for failure. The less critical processes can be noted with more flexibility.

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Customer satisfaction, how to approach it!

QHSE sales

Customer satisfaction is one thing every company strives for. However, figuring out whether a customer is really satisfied isn’t always that easy. There are a lot of different variables that can influence the customer satisfaction research outcomes such as timing, means of questioning and approach. Most importantly, the timing and means of questioning can have a big influence on the results of the research.

Timing

Every company messes up sometimes, and people understand this. It is the way you solve the issue on hand that sets you apart from others. Knowing this, it would be very inconvenient to ask what the customer thinks of you the moment the problem occurs. However, if you solve the issue properly and then you ask for the customers’ feedback, you will be more likely to receive a very positive one. Trying to measure the customer satisfaction on neutral ground is the best moment to get an unbiased result.

Means of questioning

The e-mail survey is a very effective and easy to use method to ask for customer feedback. However, a lot of people are getting these e-mails by the millions. A good practice is to also allow the sales/customer support to walk through the questions together with the customer. Use tools that allow you to email your customers along with the sales team filling up the data together with the customer.

Results

The big advantage of the digital approach is the live insight in the data. The information is always one mouse click away. This insight can help you identifying difficulties in your customer support, sales process, marketing or quality of the goods or services. This all depends on the questions you ask of course.

 

If you want to know how Qooling allows you to perform customer satisfaction just contact us!

 

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How to prepare for an external audit!

www.qooling.com audit NCR QHSE

Yes I know, ideally your company should be ready for an external audit every day of the year. However, most of the time, you will need at least a couple of weeks to gather all the information required. Here are a few important points that must always be checked before an external audit.

Perform a legislation compliance check

Make sure you have checked if your organisation complies with national and international laws and legislations. Most ISO standards are very clear on this. The company has to prove that it works according to statutory and regulatory requirements. Performing this check will help prevent a lot of uncomfortable discussions with the auditor.

Train Employees

It still happens often that employees get anxious when the auditor arrives at their desk for the external audit. You can prevent this by training the most anxious people in the team. The top performers on a regular day sometimes simply forget how they work the moment the auditor is next to them. If your management system is working as it should, the processes/procedures will describe how the people are working. There is no need for people to be anxious about the audit, just tell them to do their job as they always do.

Tools

Make sure all the tools are certified if required and properly calibrated. If during the external audit, the auditor spots an employee working with an uncertified tool this will most likely lead to an NCR, especially when he/she digs a little deeper and find more of these uncertified tools.

Documentation control

If you are not using any automated system then this is a must. Just sit down and go over every single document to make sure the latest version is available to the team and that the version is correct. You have to check these to prevent employees from using the wrong documents the moment the auditor sits next to them. Of course the easiest way is just to automate this, which will save you a lot of time.

These are by far all the points you have to take into consideration for an audit. If you have any more please share them in the comments.

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Corrective action, how effective is yours?

QHSE

The effectiveness of the corrective action can end for a lot of companies into a NCR during the audit. These companies are having trouble to not only to describe the effectiveness properly, but mainly to measure the effectiveness. Of course the effectiveness is arbitrary because people can debate whether the action was effective or not, but a better approach would certainly help a lot.

Description of the action

A good description of the action can be half of the solution. When the target end results of the action are noted down, the action embeds the measurement for effectiveness. Example:

Action

Investigate the product and measure the outline diameter. If the diameter is bigger than accepted tolerance as per work instruction, adjust it.

This is a clear described action. If the diameter is too big, it must be adjusted. For corrective actions this might be slightly trickier as they are not always that clear.

Corrective Action

Check the purchase procedure and rewrite it if it is no longer applicable .

This description is more opaque but even here you can make this measurable. The action is either performed or not, the procedure is changed or not, and the procedure is up to date or not.

Effectiveness obligatory

The effectiveness of the corrective action is a mandatory part of the standard, however most companies struggle with this. Automation is a good solution to this problem. The current solutions allow you to force an effectiveness description when you want to close a corrective action. In Qooling you have the option to make the effectiveness obligatory. With this setup the quality automation makes it easier to stay compliant to the standard.

 

We are happy to hear how you solve the effectiveness of action struggle. Please leave it in the comments.

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SWOT analysis – Context of the organisation

QHSE

The SWOT analysis is a business tool that is widely used. The introduction of chapter 4 “Context of the organisation” within the new ISO standards makes this technique applicable for management systems. Since then, it has been commonly used by quality and safety managers for improvement and development, The new versions of the ISO standards require companies to perform an in-depth analysis of the current context of the company. The internal as well as external factors have to be identified and understood properly to conduct a thorough investigation. For a long period of time, the SWOT analysis has proven to be an excellent tool for businesses to minimize their weaknesses, focus on their strengths and take advantage of beneficial opportunities.

Limitation

In order to use the SWOT analysis properly it is always good to understand some of the pitfalls that come with it. A large number of managers and academics criticise the tool because it is a “low grade” form of analysis. To have a good exercise you should consider the following flaws:

  • Excessive lists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats;
  • No prioritisation of factors;
  • Factors are described too broadly;
  • Factors are often opinions not facts;
  • There is no recognised method to distinguish between strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Approach

Most people use the approach of starting from the inside out. This technique begins by looking at the inside of the company, and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. When those are identified they can then discover the external factors such as opportunities and threats.

The inside

During identifying the strengths and weaknesses, you should look at every factor that is related to the internal environment of the organisation. Look for reasons why the company is doing better than their competitors due to internal strengths or where the company lacks these strengths and improvements can be made. Some resources to take into consideration are:

  • Land, equipment, knowledge, brand equity, intellectual property, etc.
  • Core competencies
  • Capabilities
  • Functional areas such as management, operations, marketing, finances, human resources and R&D
  • Organisational culture
  • Value chain activities

The outside

When identifying the opportunities and threats, you should look at the uncontrollable factors outside of the organisation. These factors can be very broad, such as worldwide factors or local points when it comes to local laws. Some points to think about are:

  • Market changes such as globalisation.
  • Competitors
  • Changes in laws and regulations
  • Big macroeconomic changes such as population of country, demographical changes
  • Political hot topics

Good practices

The following bullets will help you to structure the analysis to get the most value out of the exercise:

  • Identify factors relative to the competitors. Thismakes it possible to specify whether the factor is a strength or a weakness.
  • List between 3 – 5 items for each category. By doing this, it prevents the creation of lists that are either endless, or too short.
  • Items must be clearly defined and as specific as possible. For example, a firm’s strength is: brand image (vague); strong brand image (more precise); brand image valued at $10 billion, which makes it the most valued brand in the market (very good).
  • Rely on facts not opinions. Find some external information or involve someone who could provide an unbiased opinion.
  • Factors should be action orientated. For example, the “slow introduction of new products” is an action orientated weakness.

In order to be able to make use of the analysis it is important to prioritise the different factors. This helps to come up with an actionable plan on how to make the company stronger and prepared for the upcoming changes.

 

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Transition to ISO9001:2015

QHSE

The first important question to ask is why would you change to the ISO9001:2015 version. Apart from the fact that it is obligatory if you want to stay certified, it has other advantages.

Integrated system

Quite a lot of companies are certified for multiple standards. The new High Level Structure (HLS) of the ISO9001:2015 makes it easier to combine several of these standards. The HLS is embedded within more standards such as the ISO14001:2015, ISO27001:2008 and many more. This new approach makes it easier to create a single integrated management system to support all the standards that apply to your company.

Risk based thinking

The new version has risk based thinking at the center of the company. It requires companies to understand their risks and take actions accordingly. Understanding the context of the company and which opportunities and risks there are in the market. And last it should give a clear overview of the stakeholders and the power they have. All this information isn’t required to be documented but in order to properly manage all the information it is a good practice to create a specific document for it.

Opportunity to reduce complexity

The new version is less strict and gives a lot of room to reduce complexity. There are no obligatory procedures any longer and there is more freedom on how companies describe their activities. Although in practice many companies do not change or delete procedures, they could in theory. The reduction of complexity does make it easier to manage the entire management system since some documents can be delete or combined. This reduces the time of document control and redistribution of new versions, which leads to less mistakes in using old versions by the team.

Conclusion

In the end, switching to the new ISO9001:2015 standard is a requirement, but the implications for your company will not be all that significant. We see many companies first performing the minimal changes to get certified for this new version before they start to really make the system more efficient. This is a pretty standard practice because it reduces the risk of losing the certificate. On the other hand, updating the management system to the ISO9001:2015 version is a good opportunity to completely update the management system. We would love to hear which approach you prefer, put it in the comments or drop an email!

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