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QMS Integration
Episode 16 – QMS Integration
Integrating your QMS
In this Quality Hub chat, host Xavier Francis and Suzanne Strasser VP of Consulting and Development at Core Business Solutions discuss integrating ISO 9001 into daily operations. Suzanne emphasizes the importance of incorporating quality management system (QMS) requirements into normal business meetings and explores various communication channels in which to use.
Core Business Solutions publishes ISO Certification podcast episodes weekly. You can find more episodes here.
Episode 16 QMS Integration Key Content
Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to the Quality Hub chatting with ISO experts. I’m your host, Xavier Francis, and I’m here with Suzanne Strasser, VP of Consulting and Development here at Core Business Solutions. She’s been on many times before. One of her fan favorites. So glad you could be with us again.
Today’s show is entitled This Email Could Have Been a Meeting. And we’re going to talk about integrating ISO 9001 into your daily operations. And Suze is here to share her expertise with us. But before we dive into the topic, let’s get to know Suze a little better. Can you share a little bit about your journey and everything you do here for us at CORE?
Today we’re talking about a company that’s got an ISO certification, and now we’re looking at how they’re going to integrate their quality management system into daily operations. How would you begin with doing that?
Well, one way to start to do that is to integrate these concepts into normal business meetings. So there’s a clause in the standard that says you should do this, which says ensuring the integration of quality management system requirements into the organization’s business processes. Yikes.
That’s broad. But yes, a whole lot do.
But, the requirements for management review, for example, don’t say that this is a meeting at all, let alone a separate standalone once-a-year meeting, which some organizations still do. But the requirements say that top management needs to review the management system and all the specific inputs and outputs and that you need documents and information or records as evidence that you did this.
I know we only talked with Joe Hill about the management review a couple of weeks ago. That was enlightening, I think, to a lot of us that this doesn’t necessarily have to be a meeting, That is a management review meeting. You can do some of that. But like you’re saying, you need to incorporate it into everything.
Yeah. Along with management review, there are other requirements, you know, communication requirements for several topics that people need to be aware of. And so that’s part of this as well.
What are some of the specifics of how you can integrate this into existing meetings and maybe others? Avenues of communication?
Sure. Let’s start with some of the intuitive ones. Leadership must communicate several things. So top management has to ensure that responsibilities and authorities for folks are assigned communicated and understood within the organization. And they need to promote improvement in the process, approach, and risk-based thinking.
And that’s across the board. Every department needs a strong about that stuff.
And you have to think about customer satisfaction. So, you know, I read all these as the fact that leadership needs to talk about them to everybody. So for awareness, people who work in the QMS also need to know about the quality policy and the objectives that are relevant to their jobs, how they contribute to the effectiveness of the QMS, and including benefits of improved performance, you know, duh.
Yeah. And continued improvement.
Right And what happens when they don’t adhere to the QMS? There should be some kind of implication. Is it a fixing the process? So they are starting to pay attention to the quality management system or can it be more drastic?
You don’t want to go too drastic, but sometimes you end up doing that. But I always look at the process first. Obviously.
I always look at the process. Not the person.
Not the person. Right. So all these things that I just talked about could be communicated through normal meetings or other communication channels. And it doesn’t have to be a meeting. So if you do onboarding or have monthly staff meetings annual performance reviews or have team channels like we do or newsletters, these are opportunities to slot each of those topics in the normal communication vehicles.
And, you know, we use a communication plan matrix that we, you know, use with our customers.
Yeah, I know we developed that here core, and I’m sure that customers.
And that just kind of helps work out who’s going to talk about what and when. But for these kinds of topics, it’s pretty easy to see how they can become part of the normal process.
Yeah, I mean, you just you’re incorporating it and it was it take credit for what you’re already doing kind of thing. Just enhance and change it a little bit so you’re getting the things that you need for your quality menu system stuck in there as well. Which is probably some stuff you’re already doing, just doing it more formally or with minutes or something like that that you have the actual proof that. Yeah. We talked about it.
Yes. Yep.
So you try to tie as much of this into normal communication vehicles as we just talked about and meetings. How does this affect doing a management review, quote unquote? I’m doing air quotes there. Management review.
Well, where people struggle a bit is doing this with management review inputs and outputs because there’s a fair amount of the requirements say that you have to cover things like your previous action items, you know, changes in internal and external issues, the effectiveness of your processes, you know, and then a bunch of trends like customer satisfaction, your quality objectives, non-conformity and corrective actions. There’s a whole laundry list.
That’s that’s the lie. You may or may not have already been looking at some of this stuff, but you need to do it a little bit more formally and show what you’re going to address.
Yes. And there are some things that companies automatically look at, like resource needs. Of course, you’re going to do that, how your suppliers are doing. So those things are already part of your normal fabric.
Right? It’s almost like you take a more proactive approach versus a reactive approach. So you’re looking for opportunities for improvement, You’re looking for things that you can change that are going to make things better. Not, oh, we need to react to make something better because of a risk.
Right. And I’ve always said management review, in general, is a step back from the day-to-day. So you’re not in the weeds. You’re at a higher level looking at how effective your processes are and how effective your management team is. So doing that in a normal daily meeting sometimes is a challenge.
There are some things you have to gather. You have to gather the metrics to be able to look at it as a group. So that might be something that you have been doing at a bigger meeting. Or maybe you haven’t. So now you maybe need to do an add-on meeting from a management review standpoint and say, okay, we’re going to look at these trends, this data that we weren’t looking at before.
Or maybe you are incorporating something already done and then start saying, let’s add a few points to that. So we’re looking at the risks and opportunities in other things that the standard.
Yeah, you want to take advantage of the system that you’ve put in place. I mean, goodness, you’ve spent our time, time, and money on this. So you can’t just cast aside or pull it out, you know, once a year before the audit should incorporated into your operations.
Right. And that’s what’s going to help you drive continuous improvement. That makes sense. Well, there are a lot of things like like we just said that you kind of have to look at from a management review. How do you do it without just, okay, we have our six-month management review meeting up? We have a four-month management review meeting.
Yes.
Oh, like you just said, we were audited in a month and a half. We should probably look at this stuff. How can you do it without those separate meetings?
Well, to me, there are, I think, three ways to do it, apart from having a standalone meeting. The first would be that in the course of your normal management meetings, you know, like I said before, you certainly are talking about resources, improvements, metrics, customers, you know, and so on.
So you could document those meetings that you already have and then develop a crosswalk to show when and where you’ve covered the topics that you’re required to. Of course, you’d have to ensure that you’ve covered all the requirements at the end of whatever cycle you’ve defined.
So it’s almost like almost look at what you do in your meetings now. Check off. Okay. Yeah. This is covered in this. Nope, we’re not. We haven’t done this yet. We need to add that.
It’s a little dicey when you try to pull it together for an audit. I will say I have done that. I did it that way. So an easier approach would be to have the management review agenda handy.
And then when you talk about these topics, just fill in your minutes. Okay. And then at the end of the cycle, you could see what hasn’t been covered and then, you know, pull the gang together to fill in the blanks.
Right. So you’re just touching on what? The few things that you haven’t already.
Yeah. And then a third option would be to use your management review agenda as the basis for standing meetings going forward.
And then add in any other topics that come up. I like I like this approach a lot because I’ve found that most items fit in the agenda and it’s a way to make the QMS the centerpiece rather than a separate thing. You get into a rhythm, you know, and you consider using other aspects of your QMS.
Well, that makes sense because you’re trying to communicate it and you’re incorporating something new. If you’re going to focus on that, that’s going to help you gain the benefits of doing it. So why not make it the center?
Right. For example, you might be talking about a repetitive issue. And if you have the agenda in front of you, you may say, hey, wait a minute, this might be more a corrective action. And make it more embedded into your current discussions.
Sometimes just having a meeting, you’re like, hey, here’s a problem. Okay, we know there’s a problem. The standard says you need to take some steps to correct that. And look at it to fix the problem. Not just know it’s there. I see. This is a combination of taking advantage of what you’re already doing and adding some points that you need to discuss. It is probably more manageable.
It is. It is.
Do you have any stories or examples of clients or customers who found a unique way of tying their management review into their current meetings and processes?
Yeah, I have two that I thought about. One happened this week. We met with a customer yesterday who had a standing weekly quality meeting, you know, with a whole group there, and they did their first management review.
So what they’ve decided to do is every month, you know, one once a month out of their weekly meeting, they’re going to switch to the management review agenda, talk about that, you know, and then kind of switch back to their normal weekly topics.
So they’re going to take one of the 4.25 meetings a month. And make it into sorry, that’s breaking everything down in the metrics. No, but they’re going to take one of their four meetings.
Yeah. With the same group. So that’s terrific. So continuity. They’ll know what they’ve talked about, you know, from a quality standpoint every week, and then they can incorporate that into the management review topic.
And they can also bring in, okay, this is our week that we’re going to cover a little bit more detail, maybe bring in some of the process owners to be there.
Right. It’s funny you said that because they noted yesterday that the purchasing person wasn’t in the meeting so they were going to start bringing it.
Okay. Yeah. So they’re they’re they’re being aware of what we need to add. To that meeting to make it.
Yeah. I thought that was a really good approach.
That’s great. You said you had another example.
I do. It’s us. So, you know, we’re 9001 and 27,001 certified. And so we have to undergo the same processes as well. We do that there are a lot of agenda items between the two standards that we have to cover. So we do a, you know, longer meeting to bring the executive team together.
But Brian Smith, who is our director of Consulting, who’s been on here several times he’s started doing a consulting mini-management review once a month, which covers a number of the topics that we need to cover. And then quarterly, we bring Scott in to review status. So that does count towards our management review. And it’s stuff that we need to talk about as a consulting team.
Right. And I guess it’s also one of those things that via the department, you can start looking at it. Maybe you’re doing a management review type thing for each department and then you can correct somebody in that like what the one group was doing once a month, you know, okay, here’s a person that’s going to come forward and talk about that in the management review meeting.
Right. But we feel like we’re responsible for several aspects of the quality system. So, you know, metrics, documentation, what are there, things that are expired? Have we gotten any complaints, you know, things like that that we should be talking about anyway? So it’s part of the requirements to do that.
Right. Right. And with us being consultants on our front line, that makes sense for us to have a lot of that stuff right there. Talking about customer satisfaction, talking about things like that that need to be addressed.
Absolutely.
Via the standard. Well, this has been great. I do appreciate it. You always bring such a wealth of experience and knowledge here.
I mean, Are you saying I’m old?
No. I never know. would I imply it?
I say it sometimes. So it’s okay.
Let’s think we both I grew up when we had to carry lunch boxes that had cool characters on them.
Partridge Family.
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah. I’m that old Xavier. Yeah.
Well, thanks again for being here. This has been great. Always a pleasure. And we also want to thank everybody who’s listened to the podcast today. We hope it’s been informative for you. And please be sure to subscribe to our channel so you can check out the next Quality Podcast when it’s released. Have a great day.
About Core Business Solutions, Inc.
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