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Quality Improvement |
Continual Improvement, as it is termed within ISO9001 relates to the activities of an organisation to improve the performance of its management system. In practice this has little relevance to the need to improve product, reduce costs, and remove the multitude of hindrances to effective working that beset many organisations.
Improvement programs with titles such as Total Quality and Six Sigma have had varying degrees of success, but are all characterised by the complexity of the implementation mechanism, and the costs of the external facilitators that drive the program to some sort of conclusion.
To overcome these shortcomings – of which the initial cost was a major factor – we developed this program, and have gone on to show its benefits across several business sectors.
At its heart is a belief that the majority of knowledge for an effective improvement process already exists within an organisation. What is missing is a clear agreement of interests and objectives of the two groups – management and staff, and a willingness on the part of each to fully trust the other to consistently act in the best interest of the organisation and its people.
The Quality Improvment Program
There were no up-front costs to the program. What we finally learned was that the cost of bad quality in our company was so high that as we muddled through the first week or month or even the first year, common sense caused us to save costs at a faster rate than we were capable of re-investing them in what might be called up-front costs. There are no up-front costs to an intelligently thought through quality program. If you train the people in the skills and techniques in the correct sequence of their being applied they will deliver savings at a rate which will wash whatever has been passed through the books in the quarter in which they were incurred.
This Improvement Program Works!
It works because it is basically simple to understand, and once established is self supporting, so there are no ongoing charges for external consultants. Because of this basic simplicity there is just one fixed start-up cost for the program. The program is ideal for any medium sized organisation or a contained unit of a larger corporation. After the initial workshops are completed and a basic program agreed and implemented it is possible to dispense with external support. We strongly recommend this course of action as being the one that leads to program ownership and success.
Remember, no daily consultant fees, just one fixed cost which should be easily recoverable in the early weeks of the program.
