3 major benefits of a Quality Management System
Communications
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3 minute read
Organisations that implement a Quality Management System (QMS) will benefit from an upturn in sales, a reduction in costs, and improved operating efficiency.
Using a QMS will also increase staff motivation, as it provides a clear and consistent company-wide approach to delivering results – everyone understands what is expected of them to fulfill their role.
By encouraging staff to have pride in customer service, take ownership of their own work stream, and by introducing quality standards into job processes, organisations can get the best value from their team without incurring any additional labour costs.
This ensures the delivery of high-quality projects being completed on time and within budget, exceeding client expectations.
When a company decides to implement a QMS, it has already given a lot of thought to its internal processes and how it can best maximise quality and efficiency throughout its organisation.
A QMS establishes agreed protocols and processes. Laying out clear guidelines which can be easily followed by anyone is fundamental to a good QMS, as it guarantees a consistent approach and makes staff training, role transition, and trouble-shooting of any issues less complicated.
#1) Increased sales
Implementing an effective QMS will improve customer satisfaction, through enhanced processes and customer service. In turn, this will lead to an improved sales performance.
By establishing and demonstrating an explicit commitment to, and support of, best practice quality values, and by defining these in a quality policy document, organisations can empower their staff to act with greater integrity during contact with customers, guided by the employee’s ability to refer to robust good policies and procedures.
The use of quality systems in document and data control allows employees to always have up-to-date, accurate information on specifications and technical data.
In addition, customer requirements are more precisely assessed via contract review policies, which ensure a disciplined approach to specifying work. This prevents overpromising on services or delivery, which in turn improves customer satisfaction levels due to greater dependability of product and service delivery.
Quality control during service fulfillment ensures effective inspection and testing of products, and a faster, reliable response to any identified issues or customer problems.
Achieving third-party certification in QMS also clearly establishes an organisation’s commitment to delivering a high standard of customer service and support – often a contractual requirement.
#2) Reduced costs
A successful QMS can reduce problems, waste, and a significant amount of employee time. Issues are identified sooner and access to relevant information is widely available. Ultimately, this will reduce operational costs and improve efficiency.
Systematic identification and resolution of issues at an early stage will reduce production defects and issues through continual improvement and analysis of quality-related problems. This will diminish the need for mitigation after customer delivery. The ongoing process of quality improvement also reduces wastage, as fewer defects are generated.
The impact on employee time of trying to fix defects and mitigate customer issues relating to these is dramatically lessened, as critical information and standard methods documentation are in place and accessible to all staff, at all times.
#3) Improved operating efficiencies
The introduction of a QMS into operating standards means better control of supplier input into the production and service processes, thereby improving efficiency.
Improvements can also be achieved by continual review and refinement of systems and methods, thanks to more disciplined problem identification and resolution. A systematic program of regular process review can also establish more effective internal communications and will have a positive impact on interdepartmental understanding and collaboration and team building.
The availability of accurate, reliable, and accessible statistics for effective analysis means a superior planning future system can be provided.
Summary
The potential internal, staff morale, customer relations, commercial and financial benefits of implementing a QMS can often be made obvious by simply looking at the areas of improvement, and by making a subjective judgment about how well the issues involved are currently handled by the organisation.
In essence, a properly established and adhered to QMS will ensure the continual development of an organisations’ systems, processes, procedures and working methods. It will also deliver ongoing positive results in terms of increased efficiency and effectiveness, reducing waste, improving internal communication, and clarifying roles and performance standards, as well as helping to generate additional sales as a result of ensuring a better customer experience, encouraging long terms relationships and repeat business.
When you look at it like that, it is really not a bad idea.
