Quality Objectives – part 3

“Finally” I hear you think.  Yes, I am finally going to tell you what are the minimum quality objectives needed for certification or at least to meet the requirements of the standard.  We have explored quality objectives from the standard (8/8/11) and then the mechanics and the metrics (5/9/11), now we need to go to the requirements of the standard for ‘quality policy’  And these are;

5.3 Quality policy.  Top management ensures the quality policy.  a)is appropriate to the purpose of the Company Name,  b)includes a commitment to comply with requirements and continually improve the effectiveness of the quality management system,  c)provides a framework for establishing and reviewing quality objectives,  d) is communicated and understood within Company Name, and e) is reviewed for continuing suitability.

So from this we have two quality objectives; 1) comply with the qms and 2) continually improve the qms.  Both can be measured via internal quality audit results and the corrective / preventive action processes.  You also use the certification process to measure compliance.  Have you noticed there has not been any mention of the customer or even focus on the customer or satisfaction.  Well there is none, but you try getting that passed any auditor and I will bid you good luck.  There is an expectation that at least one quality objective structured around the customer, so have one and you then won’t have to debate it with our certification fraternity.

Now that you have your objectives you just need to word them correctly, set a target for each, measure them, report them, resource them and demonstrate that you can do all that and still react to any adverse trends within them.  Happy objectifying.

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com/
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/