What is a Quality Management System?

Quality Management System Overview

Pretend for a minute that you decide to start your own a Pizza Parlor.

It doesn’t matter if you choose to run it on your own or if you purchase a franchise. A Pepperoni pizza will need pepperoni, cheese, sauce, and pizza dough anywhere. However, when you go to different pizza places, you feel a difference. On the surface, they should be the same but depending on what type of pizza parlor you choose to be, some of the ingredients and/or recipes can be different.

Each pizza parlor has its own way of doing things. How the pizza is put together can be different.  How the order is taken, handled and communicated will be different.  Each pizza parlor, in its own way, has deployed ways of doing things (processes) to ensure an order for Pepperoni pizza is understood and can be executed by their team.

Defined activities are in place to complete and deliver the requested pizza.

In the case of the franchises, the key activities may have been predefined for you- standardized. In the case of the local parlor, the activities are self-developed (designed by you).

So, what is a Quality Management System?

The Way You Do Business.

All the activities (processes) that a pizza parlor puts together to ensure that a customer receives what they order is indeed what we call a Quality Management System.  You might just call it “the way we do business,” and that is precisely right. A Quality Management System (QMS) is an essential part of any business, but most people don’t call it that.

According to Juran, Quality is when “a product meets customer needs leading to customer satisfaction, and … all of the activities in which a business engages in, to ensure that the product meets customer needs.” 1 Therefore we could say that a:

 Quality Management System (QMS) is the set of processes/activities that enable a business to meet these requirements.

Quality Management Systems are implemented to ensure customer satisfaction. The company can create their own recipe for success is.

When creating the recipe for success, you decide how your QMS will be built.

You define the processes that help you deliver your product or service in a consistent manner while meeting defined requirements. For Example, in the Pizza Parlor you may have the following steps in place when building an order:

 

Quality Management System Review

Often Quality Management Systems (QMS) are associated with having documents – such as procedures, work instructions, forms, etc. They may be in digital or printed format. Formal instructions (documentation) is a component of the QMS, but not the center of it. In the case of the Pizza Parlor, we can argue that all the documents you need are the pizza recipes and a clear manner to convey “special” order requirements (i.e. light sauce, extra cheese, etc).

You decide what works for your company and how you build up a QMS, “your way of doing things”.

Keep your QMS simple

When defining your own QMS (Quality Management System), keep it simple. We have found that many companies and organizations simply do not implement QMS due to the over-complication of procedures, which eventually never get off the ground. Start simple and grow as your business grows.