BUILDING BLOCKS for Quality Improvement

摘要

Whether you are building a home, a business relation-ship, or even a quality program, all require the support of a solid foundation on which to build for the future. When it comes to constructing a quality program that can lead to real business improvement, the proper building blocks are the key to success. If you are just starting to build a quality system or are working to improve your company's processes, some guidance from quality management experts may be useful. Patrick Dey, senior consultant at Excel Partnership, Inc., offers this advice: "Understand your business, and what matters to your customers, shareholders, and executive management. Use this understanding to prioritize and structure your management system. Don't do things 'because ISO 9001 requires it.' Instead, take ISO 9001 as a model of the processes we expect to find in a well-run business and, for each process you don't have, answer the question, 'If we had this process, then the value would be .... The answer should relate directly to something that matters to customers, shareholders, or executive management."