The 7 fundamental quality management principles
How the 7 fundamental quality management principles can help you drive consistency and facilitate continuous improvement
Quality management systems (QMS) are a collection of processes used by businesses to help increase productivity, improve customer service and reduce waste.
When formalized (and any QMS ought to be formalized), they form a system that documents processes, procedures, and responsibilities for achieving quality policies and objectives.
This helps an organization ensure that its products or services consistently meet customer requirements and that quality is consistently improved.
There are seven fundamental quality management principles (QMP) that sit at the heart of every QMS.
Typically, these principles are aligned with the ISO 9001 standard, which is one of the most widely used frameworks for quality management.
No one principle is intrinsically any more important than another. In fact, the importance of these principles can vary greatly between different organizations.
The seven fundamental quality management principles
1. Customer Focus
The primary focus of a QMS is to meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations. Success depends on understanding current and future customer needs, aligning organizational objectives with customer satisfaction, and ensuring that all processes are geared toward delivering value to customers.
2. Leadership
Strong leadership is essential to create a unified purpose and direction. Leaders are responsible for establishing a vision, setting clear goals, and creating an environment where employees are engaged in achieving the organization’s objectives. Leadership promotes alignment, motivation, and a culture of continuous improvement.
3. Engagement of People
Employees at all levels are the core of the organization. Their full involvement enables them to use their abilities to benefit the organization. A QMS encourages empowering employees, promoting teamwork, and ensuring that employees are aware of their roles and responsibilities related to quality.
4. Process Approach
Understanding and managing activities as interrelated processes helps achieve consistent and predictable results. The process approach involves defining the inputs, outputs, and interactions of different processes within the organization to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
5. Improvement
Continuous improvement is a permanent objective of a QMS. Organizations should strive to improve their processes, products, and services over time—whether through small, incremental changes or more substantial, transformational improvements. A culture of continuous improvement helps organizations stay competitive and responsive to change.
6. Evidence-Based Decision Making
Decisions should be based on the analysis of data and information. Using accurate and reliable data improves decision-making, reduces risks, and leads to better outcomes. A QMS encourages organizations to collect, analyze, and use data to guide improvements and ensure informed, fact-based decisions.
7. Relationship Management
An organization’s success depends on effective management of relationships with interested parties, such as suppliers, partners, and customers. A QMS emphasizes collaboration, communication, and mutually beneficial relationships that enhance performance and create value.
Applying quality management principles
QMPs are the cornerstones of building and sustaining excellence. Smart managers use them to define objectives, establish processes and develop systems to manage quality in a way that improves business functions and day-to-day operations.
They make it possible to establish a quality management culture, foster consistency, facilitate continuous improvement, promote a customer-oriented mindset, encourage team engagement, reduce risk and support organizational competitiveness.
Getting Started with a Quality Management System
AutomateIT’s digital QMS solutions offers all the benefits listed above and more. Implementing this and aligning it with your strategic goals will enable you to meet your quality and production targets.
If you’d like more information on implementing a QMS, contact us today to find out how we our smart manufacturing consultants can help.