Free Training Course -Foundations of Quality Management System (QMS) According to ISO 9001:2015 - module (4) - Leadership.
In the last module we took (Free Training Course-Foundations of Quality Management System (QMS) According to ISO 9001-2015 - module3) Context of Organization.
In this module we will take leadership in ISO 9001 standard.
Leadership cover 3 aspects:
- Leadership and commitment
- Quality policy
- Organizational roles and responsibilities
- Leadership and commitment
According to the standard the following things represent
management commitment:
- Establishing quality policy and objectives.
- Ensuring availability of resources necessary for affecting of QMS.
- Communicating the importance of quality management.
- Demonstrate the leadership for the quality management by applying the QMS in practice to give good example for the rest of employees.
- Making sure the QMS is integrate in the company processes, meaning that the quality management is the part of the way the company operates and not having the QMS as an isolated matter.
- Promote the continual improvement of the QMS. There are several ways to promote improvement in the organization for example, enable employees to propose improvement processes such as suggestion box, dedicated email, or organize brainstorming sessions for QMS improvement, etc.
Leadership and commitment is very important for the success
of the QMS in a company. Without leadership and commitment, the project for
implementation of QMS would certainly fail.
The QMS cannot function if the top management create
exception for some process’s rules. Rather, they should lead by example by
complying all the rules.
ISO 9001 requires from top management to demonstrate
leadership and commitment and it is not required to be documented how it will
be done. However, it is useful to document the requirements for this clause as
a responsibility of top management regarding QMS.
- Quality Policy.
It is required by top management to document the quality
policy and to distribute it to all employees and make it available to the
appropriate interested parties.
This policy should reflect the intention of the company
regarding the QMS and should clearly show the management commitment to satisfy
applicable requirements and continually improve the QMS objectives.
The quality policy is important because it sets the basis
for the QMS in the company and gives direction in which it will be developed
and maintained.
Quality policy should not be too detailed, it is common
misunderstanding that quality policy should include details quality management
rules. However, the details about operating controls and rules should be
described in other documents like details policies and procedures.
- Organizational roles, responsibilities, and authorities.
Top management must define the responsibilities and
authorities for the roles for the quality management and communicate them to
everyone in the organization.
Assigning and communicating roles and responsibilities is
important because that how all employees will know what is expected of them,
what is their impact on the QMS, and how they can contribute.
Top management should assign the responsibilities and
authorities for two aspects:
- Ensuring fulfillment of ISO 9001 requirements.
- Reporting on effectiveness of QMS.
Their responsibilities and authorities can be allocated to
one or more roles or people within the organization according to the business.
For example, for small companies with simple QMS, it is
logical to assign one person to be responsible for implementation of the
requirements and reporting the performance of QMS to the top management. This person
is typically called quality manager or quality assurance manager (QAM) or
quality engineer etc.
For bigger companies with more complex QMS might be more
practical to have one person responsible for implementing the requirements and
other for reporting, another option to have one person responsible implementing
the requirements and reporting for one segment of QMS such as the quality
performance and another person for production process, design and development,
etc.
Not required for roles and responsibilities to be documented
as per standard. However, it is good practice to show more practical to
communicate them if they are documented.
You can document QMS roles and responsibilities in job
descriptions or in the organizational chart.
Of course, you should document the specific roles and responsibilities
in various policies, procedures, plans and other documents that you will
develop during implementation of ISO 9001.