Horse Hockey.
While it IS true that the ideal is that the owners of the process
drive process improvement through control of the procedures, Auditing
practice dictates that those doing the work cannot - for objectivity
reasons - audit their own work. This is a basic principle in Auditing
that has been around forever, and it ain't gonna go away any time
soon.
Further, the Quality System at any ISO certified company MUST undergo
ongoing review to ensure suitability in the light of changing business
climates. Whether your company is growing or downsizing, the system
frequently requires adjustments and fine-tuning to fit the moving
target of the business model. People doing the work are genreally
oblivious of the "big picture". They simply do not have the tools, the
knowledge, the time, or the mandate to try and effect changes in the
system itself. Inability of the system to adapt to the changing
environment that it exists in will see your company de-certified VERY
quickly.
Any Quality Assurance Manager that is doing his or her job properly is
worth their weight in GOLD. I come from the world of REGULATED medical
device manufacturing. If you don't want to lose your shirt in a
lawsuit, or have your plant shut down by authorities such as Health
Canada or the US FDA, then you better have a Quality Assurance
Manager, and that person better have all the people properly trained,
and all the required records in place. All of this comes under the
title "Due Dilligence". Fail to perform due dilligence, and you could
find your self on the short end of a long lawsuit - one that could see
you out of business and unable to make ANY profit.
Sure there are going to be leaches and hanger-on-ers. But they get
weeded out in time. One ISO Registrar put it to me like this years ago
"Does your position in the company add value? If it does, then you
must be qualified, and you must be auditable. If you feel that your
position does not add value for the company, then you might want to
warm up that resume sooner than later."
So, as I am a Quality Manager, I always frame my job in terms of what
value I am adding for the company. It is every bit as important to
engage in "due dilligence", and preventive activities as it is to
enegage in profit making activities - since failure to do so can erase
all profit that was ever made. So I balance my time by maximizing the
value that I add. I engage in prevention, I engage in direct profit
generation, and I engage in enhancement of customer service. I keep
the ducks lined up, and I act as a coach to everyone in the company to
assist THEM in making the "right" decisions on a day to day basis.
Last year when I sucessfully lead us through our ISO13485:2003
upgrade, I personally thanked every employee in the company after we
passed the audit. One junior person asked me "why?". I told him that
this success was more about HIM that it was about me. Without all of
them doing the good work, my job would not be possible. He was quick
to point out that without my ongoing facilitation for all of them,
that THEY would not have been in a position to do as well as they had.
And he is correct.
As to redundent managers, I would suggest that a LOT of senior
management is redundent! The #1 complaint I have had over the years is
that senior management does not see the value in quality because they
do not provide sufficient resources for quality to do the job
properly. Without sufficient resources, QA is tied up in knots, we are
unable to put systems in place that measure and directly tie the value
added by quality back to the bottom line of the company. So I submit
that senior management is merely paying lip service, and in many cases
passionate lip service, to quality initiatives. Many senior managers
are on a power trip. They have no intention of losing control of
things and being subordinated by the rules of a quality system - even
if failure to do so means reduced profit for the company.
I've had it up to here with people taking pot-shots at QA when the QA
department is underfunded and understaffed while the engineering
department is all fat & greasy with lots of resources to spare. Too
often the role of Quality Manager is really the role of "scape goat".
I looked at a possible job at one such company a couple of years back.
They had gone through 4 Quality Managers in 3 years. I managed to talk
to an employee of that company out of office hours. The real story?
The company was cutting corners. When Customers complained to
management, management was blaming the Quality Manager! Managers were
either fired, or they saw it coming and left before the crap hit the
fan.
The fact of the mater is that the position of Quality Manager is
required, and does add value. However, just like all other jobs, you
can't get the job done if you don't have to tools to do it.
External Audits by notified bodies and registrars are disruptive to a
business. Having these audits more frequently will simply slow
processes down, reduce throughput, and impede the ability of people to
do their jobs effectively and allow the company to make both quality
products and profits. And this would be exacerbated by the absense of
a Quality Manager to facilitate the audit for the External Audit Team.
I don't know who you are my good fellow, but your approach is as
suspect as it is naive. Looks to me like you are stiring the pot, and
pointing the finger square away from you and at other people.
I can't vouch for other managers. However, I can tell you that I add
so much value for my company that I got a promotion and a raise while
downsizing measures were being undertaken and others were being laid
off. The CEO of my company recognized the value I add IN WRITING, and
on my paycheque. There can be no stronger endorsement of a job well
done than this.
Is my position as a Quality Manager redundent? Not only do I not think
so, but the person who counts - the CEO and co-owner of the company -
does not think so either. Every dime he pays me comes out of
"hip-pocket national bank". You can bet your life if he thought I was
not adding value, my position would have been eliminated a LONG time
ago.
On 22 Mar 2006 20:26:32 -0800, "Iam" <jajithku...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
http://thequalityportal.com/gs/tqm.htm >Tottering Quality Management The Quality Portal :: Guest Author Series
>"... abolish the post of Quality Assurance Manager in all ISO certified
>companies."
>The concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) took the corporate world
>by storm almost two decades ago. There were many reasons for it, but
>the most important one being European Union's move to allow imports
>only from companies with ISO certification. International Standards
>Organisation (ISO) rose from anonymity to become a household name in
>the corporate world in no time. All types of business and organisations
>started looking for certification of their goods and services to keep
>up their exports. Till then 'quality' was at best a desirable
>attribute and only Japanese companies paid any attention to it as a
>policy. But the rush for ISO certification changed all that. Many good
>changes resulted but many more unwanted tendencies surfaced. Two
>decades down the lane it may be a useful exercise to retrospect on the
>issue. Did ISO certification bring about any desirable change? Is it
>necessary to continue with it in its present form? TQM is tottering and
>drastic steps (by ISO) are required if the good effects of quality
>movement are to survive.
>E r r o n e o u s C o n c e p t s
>There are two aspects to Quality Management - Quality Assurance (QA)
>and Quality Control (QC). Ever since the advent of mass production and
>assembly lines, QC has been an integral part of the industry in the
>developed world. It sounds thoroughly logical to have someone or some
>system to control the quality of things produced in mass. Systems and
>procedures for QC vary from industry to industry. Non-Destructive
>Testing (NDT) of items, even if done on a random basis, is good for
>both the produced and user. It is no surprise that the concept of NDT
>caught on and developed into a full fledged engineering activity of its
>own. There is absolutely no dispute on the need to have the various
>levels of certifications in this field to maintain the quality of
>products.
>It is the deceitful cousin (i.e., QA) that is suspect in the eyes of
>industry observers, especially in the services sector. We all know that
>it is possible to take any horse to the water front, but it is always
>upto the horse to drink it. Quality in an organisation is of a similar
>nature. We can have perfect systems & procedures for quality, but if
>the employees are not willing to follow, the whole system will fail to
>deliver. All companies in the services sector are victims of this
>syndrome. When the quality movement started, some shady agencies
>deceived their clients by promising that a quality assurance system, a
>quality certification and a quality assurance manager can ensure
>quality of the output. A QA system is as good or bad as the quality of
>those who implement it and no company with sub-standard employees can
>provide standard services even if there is an ISO certified QA system
>and an expert QA Manager in place.
>The most significant development in the rush for quality has been the
>unprecedented growth in the number of certification agencies. From a
>few international players the number has grown in hundreds the world
>over. The initial few had a bountiful harvest when the rush started and
>that provided an ugly model for numerous 'operators' to try their
>hand at a low-investment-high-return business opportunity. The simple
>fact that most of the new certification agencies have their principals
>in Europe and it was the European Union that triggered the quality
>juggernaut makes the whole exercise suspect.
>R e d u n d a n t M a n a g e r s
>The single most beneficiary of this erroneous concept of Quality
>Assurance has been a set of professionals masquerading as Quality
>Assurance Managers (QAM) in ISO certified companies. They first descend
>on the victims (desperate for ISO certification) in the form of experts
>or consultants willing to assist in getting the initial certification.
>It goes to their credit that they do a useful job at this stage. In
>most companies, there will be severe shortage of expertise to document
>the procedures they follow in a systematic manner. This vacuum is
>easily filled up by the so-called ISO experts and consultants. After
>marathon sessions with the employees, an acceptable and auditable
>quality system is set up. Then these quality consultants (sometimes in
>the form of a full fledged company itself) spend months after months
>conducting mock audits, feedbacks and corrections, until finally the
>whole system is ready for offering to an accredited external agency for
>certification. It is always up to these ISO consultants to conclude
>their deal by 'arranging' a smooth audit and certification as per
>ISO norms.
>The dubious and redundant aspect of quality management starts from this
>point. In order to maintain the certification and withstand the
>periodic surveillance audits of the external agency, most companies are
>too willing to accommodate these consultants or experts in the form of
>a Quality Assurance Manager. Guidelines of ISO have made it easier for
>these 'redundant' managers to report directly to the Chief
>Executive in order to keep "Quality" as a high level and
>independent function in the organisation. And that makes it easier for
>these climbers to stay on forever. Most of the time, their work is
>reduced to arranging 'facilities' for the external auditors and
>'taking care' of them during the audits. Both these efforts do not
>necessarily contribute to the quality of the host organisation is a
>simple fact that misses the attention of the chief executives. In fact
>they are counter productive and retrograde. In the long run almost all
>such companies end up uneconomical thanks to their misplaced
>overemphasis on quality rather than profit. Quality is meaningful only
>in a profit making company and all the efforts for it must subordinate
>the ultimate objective of making profit.
>D e s i r a b l e C h a n g e s
>It is time that the policy makers at ISO started thinking in terms of
>pulling their systems of auditing and certification out of the
>'suspicion net' they have fallen into. There should be strict norms
>for authorisation of certification agencies and stricter ones for the
>way they conduct business. Recertification and surveillance audits
>should be more frequent and conducted in a transparent and professional
>manner. Qualification and integrity of the auditors must be thoroughly
>scrutinised. More than a profession of its own, auditors must be chosen
>from peers in the industry itself. Those who have not done mending by
>themselves can never audit or certify a mender.
>There are several changes required on the part of the users of these
>certification agencies as well. The first change that is inevitable
>must come from the realisation that a Quality Assurance Manager in an
>ISO certified organisation is actually impeding quality rather than
>promoting it. Once written procedures are available and initial
>certification is over, all further revisions must be carried out by the
>owners of the procedures. And owners of quality procedures must be
>operating departments themselves and not the Quality Assurance Manager.
>In most cases, once the ISO certification is over, the employees carry
>on with their usual work leaving the quality aspects to the QA Manager.
>This is not correct. The best way to avoid this scenario is to abolish
>the post of Quality Assurance Manager in all ISO certified companies.
>Internal audits must be carried out by the procedure owners themselves
>and external audits by accomplished auditors of integrity. If ISO
>doesn't see darkness at the end of the tunnel now, it would be
>disaster that awaits ISO certified companies in the near future.
