Quality management system analysis is evaluating & assessing the system documents, procedures, processes to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the system.
First of all, let’s divide the entire management of the company into two essential and, often, contradictory components:
- Operational management.
- System management.
Operational Management
The operational management is based on the current facts and involves a quick (often the most resource-intensive) solution. At the same time, it is not expected that this decision will be reproduced in the future. And when the next, the third, the fourth… since the organization is faced with the same situation, then either another operational decision can be made, or the previous one can be maintained (but it is not possible to predict in advance what this decision will be). In fact, such management is chaotic (random) in nature, because it is implemented only at the time of peak situations.
Vivid examples of such management are:
- To catch the first employee who came across in the corridor and give him an assignment.
- Distribute tasks on the planner, to those people who, by virtue of their duties, had to perform these tasks and without any plans.
- Not to make any decisions at all until a breakdown occurs, i.e., to manage from breakdown to breakdown.
System Management
The system management (it is also often called regular) requires the collection of information and comprehensive consideration of decisions, primarily because this decision is made for the future. Once made, the decision can, of course, be reversed, but it will be the next decision. In this case.
The manager is expected to be inextricably linked to documents and databases, and decisions are made after consultation with the executors. At the same time, consultation is needed, first of all, in order to find the most convenient and economical solution for all participants. But secondly, consultation is required to obtain the approval of the executor of the future decision (loyalty of the performer).
It is not necessary to prove that systems management, which is based on the systemic approach proclaimed by the standard, needs to be implemented to ensure the implementation of almost all the norms established by the standard.
The pros and cons of both management methods are obvious.
- With operational management, the speed of decision-making is great, there is no delay in issues, but decisions will always be perceived by the staff as “alien”, the nervous situation is transmitted from the management to all performers, and it seems that the company is in an eternal crisis.
- System management, on the contrary, does not imply quick decisions, here in general management should be considered as a decision-making PROCESS (i.e., a decision is made not at a time, but as a result of some analytical work). As a consequence, decision-making itself is costly, not to mention the timing of decision-making. But we must remember, we take it not for once.
So, the Quality management system analysis of the system is the ultimate expression of the system approach in management.
Now let’s consider a typical situation of a “valid” Quality management system analysis. There is a quality manager, whose main task is to ensure the successful passage of the next supervisory audit. To do this, he agrees on the conduct of internal audits, conducts corrective actions on them and, as a result, prepares an analysis report. Naturally, the better it describes the situation, the fewer problems this manager will have both during the supervisory audit and after the supervisory audit. Management, remembering the “quality” just a couple of weeks before the supervisory audit, will study the report with interest, learn from the report that almost everything in the system is good and will again deal with urgent operational management issues. So why isn’t analysis in demand?
Maybe the data collected is not interesting?
Alas, most often there is no data at all, but there is only a formal response to the requirements of the standard. But why is there no data? Even if they can be collected, which is often very difficult to do, there is no need for this data, because operational management prevails.
There is a deep habit that in our country, and especially in construction, nothing can be planned and predicted in advance. And if so, then at all levels of management of the construction organization there is no habit of analyzing the state of the system. The most subject to analysis is the financial system. But it can’t always provide information about potential production failures. So we work from blockage to blockage.
Meanwhile, the value of analysis is precisely in predicting blockages in the early stages, when the “bells” are not yet so loud, when you can not rush into making decisions, but calmly think about who and how will do the work and what will be needed for this.
But if suddenly the management decides to collect information, then:
To collect analytical data.
It is necessary to make incredible efforts (after all, no one has been doing this for a year, everyone has enough of their operational work), as a result, it takes time, and a lot.
Where to get the data.
Any construction company knowingly builds a policy of hiding any information, as a result, official documents are not objective, and not official ones, if they were, then safely destroyed or stored in the form of a pile of letters, “service cards”, sketches, etc., in order to sort through all this you need experience, comprehensive knowledge of the situation, and managers do not have time for this “nonsense”, the ordinary executor is physically unable to understand this.
A functional approach.
Encouraged by an unthinked (read operational, depending on the mood of the leadership) system of punishments, generates functional cohesion (no “garbage” can go beyond the department, my department is my fortress), as a result, the manager leading the department does not seek to solve existing problems of interaction with other departments or the outside world (that is, just to solve systemic problems), but on the contrary, contributes to their silence as much as possible, shields his subordinates before the top management (who knows, or else he himself will get it).
The management is accustomed to solving quickly and immediately.
And does not want to return to previously “resolved” issues, especially since there is no need to listen to the objections of the performers, and this naturally leads to the fact that the analysis of the QMS does not contain its main component – the analysis of decisions.
Consequence of the previous:
The utmost interest of “analysts” in the resultx analysis reduces objectivity to zero; who usually collects the data? the one who is responsible to management for the satisfactory result of the activities being analyzed.
And finally, the only service concerned with the collection of data for analysis is the quality service, which, as a rule, simply does not have access to these very data collected.
Meanwhile, management objectively needs objective information:
- About the implementation of management decisions.
- About the degree of loyalty of employees to management decisions (and, as a consequence, to the willingness to implement these decisions),
- About the effectiveness or, conversely, the costliness of existing or newly applied mechanisms,
- About the loyalty of the customer and all those who stand behind him (investors, exploitation, realtors, etc.), moreover, about the loyalty of specific people – representatives of the customer, etc.
What to do? So,
What can be done to ensure that the Quality management system analysis process works?
First of all, the analysis of the QMS should be considered as a long-term activity (process), and not a one-time action.
The basis for the analysis is data. But don’t confuse data and data sources. A data source should be understood as an entity that provides information (but in a particular situation may not provide it). For example: from the work log you can get information about the comments of the technical supervision (but it may not be there). At the same time, the log, as you understand, is a source of data, and the records of technical supervision are data.
Data and data sources
The data source can be a record document or other storage medium (for example: an employee can provide information about the degree of compliance with the production environment, the moral climate in the team, etc.)
The data itself, i.e. analytical information, is something that can be obtained after processing the source of information.
So before we talk about Quality management system analysis or data analysis, we need to determine: what data do we need at all? In solving this issue, the first role is played by the company’s management! If the task of collecting data for analysis is not set by management at all, then naturally data collection will not follow.
Nevertheless, quality services, quality managers and other employees involved in the formation and development of the QMS of the organization should accept as an axiom that they should warm up interest in data from management. And for the management it should become the norm that the quality service “sticks its nose” into all production and near-production affairs, otherwise there is no need to create an analytical service at all.
In order for quality workers to show interest in such “internal intelligence”, attempts to collect data should be encouraged. Unfortunately, the exact opposite of management activities often occurs. For example, in one construction company, I witnessed how, in response to the statement of the head of the quality control department that their inspectors began to record many deviations in monolithic works and it would be necessary to develop corrective actions, the chief engineer said: if necessary, then work it out.
What should quality workers do as part of the Quality management system analysis process?
It is necessary to constantly analyze the analysis itself! That is, they received data, processed them, gave them to the director’s desk and thought about whether they should be collected in the future or whether it is better to collect other more useful information.
As an example: you often encounter a situation at certification audits when the same data is collected from year to year about, for example, how many internal audits have been conducted over the past period. And this is accompanied by information that corrective actions have been taken for all five inconsistencies recorded on these audits (it is a pity that the analysis does not say that all these five corrective actions from year to year are also the same!?).
This situation indicates the poor-quality work of the quality service itself: the collected information should be needed by the management! And to do this, it is necessary to constantly come up with what data and in what form of presentation to offer the management for the next analysis, so that they ensure the objectivity of the analysis.
Source of Analysis
But alas, announcing what needs to be collected for analysis is only the first step. Because this data is hidden from analysts in different, often difficult to access sources for analysis. And if you try to solve the problem of collection head-on. Then even knowing these sources exactly, it will be impossible to collect information, or, rather. It will be an extremely time-consuming process (In fact, it will turn out that the entire organization will be able to it’s just going to work on data collection, isn’t that ridiculous).
Such a situation can be simulated if the average construction organization sets out to determine. How many deadline failures took place at all 15 facilities where work took place in the current year. Immediately there will be additional clarifications of what is considered a failure of the deadline. Where the customer approved the postponement, and where he approved. Because he had no opportunity not to approve. (There are still no other contractors, and he, the customer, ungodly owed for the work already performed).
And then the question will arise that there is a failure of the deadline, and how to assess it. If in the graph one line is “hammered” the implementation of monolithic works on all 20 floors of the building, etc. And as a result, in order to collect information, it is necessary to shovel a pile of graphs, letters, protocols and still the result does not guarantee objectivity.
Hence the conclusion:
It is necessary, after making a decision on the collection of certain information for analysis. To identify data sources and introduce data collection procedures that would ensure a regular flow of information. It is impossible to postpone the start of data collection to the moment. When it is necessary to conduct an analysis, the data should be accumulated in an already processed form.
For example, if all letters containing the customer’s comments are automatically transmitted to the quality service, whose employee routinely clarifies with the contractor whether he really had a local violation or is an unjustified claim, then, probably, at the end of the year it will be easier to sum up the collection of data on the customer’s comments.
At the same time, it should be understood that each data source is unique and approaches to the intermediate collection of information should be specific.
Let’s sum up the intermediate result.
In order for the analysis to take place, it is necessary:
- To determine what data for analysis we need to collect.
- Identify the sources of this data (records and personnel who could provide data for analysis).
- Determine how (by what procedure) to ensure the collection and generalization (or structured storage) of data for their subsequent analysis.
- In the course of work to implement procedures for collecting and summarizing data.
Without a doubt, the latter is the most difficult (after all, it involves constant routine compliance with the established rules). In general, the most difficult thing in our country is to follow the established rules.
At the same time, I repeat, it is necessary to analyze the need to change the composition of the data collected every time.
But to define all this is not to implement it. You need an initiating moment – the one that starts the analysis process. In the standard, initiation is defined by a formula that ensures the periodicity of analysis: “at scheduled intervals”.
Plan your analysis.
You can plan “time intervals” in different ways:
- In relation to the annual cycle (year, quarter, month).
- As a result of the implementation of some project (completion of the construction object, completion of the work stage),
- In a combined form (part of the data is collected in reference to time, and part in relation to the end of the work stage).
A good analysis, of course, assumes the last combined option. But at the stage of system development, it is possible to simplify the analysis procedure.
The choice of analysis planning method is highly dependent on the organization’s products.
Obviously, if the company is building one single object with all its might. Then the analysis is appropriately associated with the stages of this construction. Conversely, when an organization implements hundreds of small projects (for example, the installation of fire extinguishing systems at various small facilities). And their duration is small (one to two months), then it is not appropriate to talk about linking the analysis of the system to the object.
In general, organizations can be divided into two types:
- “Project” type (they implement fully or partially voluminous investment projects. For example: design of a hydroelectric power plant, its construction and / or installation of equipment on it).
- Conveyor (flow) type (Such organizations can even include designers if they produce simple projects. For example, building binding projects).
To organize a “project” type, the focus of system analysis should be on the project (because the entire system is directed to this project). Moreover, in the extreme version, the analysis of the system and the analysis of the project (if there is only one project) can coincide.
For a conveyor, it is impossible to isolate a specific project (product) from a huge number of simultaneously implemented, therefore, the analysis cannot be tied to a specific project implementation (production of a specific order). Here, the analysis is a generalized assessment of all the work being carried out, and its binding is appropriate to certain dates.
So, we need to define a rule for initiating analysis. At the same time, for different data, the analysis period may also be different. But in this case, it is not necessary to tie the decisions based on the results of the analysis to a specific date. That is, they studied the materials received and immediately made decisions.
Analysis Solutions
What can be the solutions? First of all, it is worth remembering that we are talking about decisions based on the results of the analysis of the system. (Or part of it), as a result, we are interested in system solutions. We are not talking about operational decisions (these are usually made at planners of all levels).
The system solution is associated with the impact on the system, through:
- Redistribution of resources (or changes in their composition).
- Changes in the methods (procedures, rules) of work (processes, activities, etc.).
- Impact on the external environment (access to new investors, change of suppliers, introduction of new products, etc. global transformations).
When we talk about decisions resulting from Quality management system analysis. It is necessary to understand that these decisions are made not only on the basis of data born in the depths of the quality management system.
For decisions to be sustainable, data must be supplemented with information from other systems.
Obviously, it is not permissible for decisions to be “made” in quality service (a typical situation in most organizations). Because the category of decisions has a level of transformation in the organization.
Of course, in some organizations, the quality system is managed by an employee with the authority to reform production. (But this is extremely rare, more often the general director does not transfer such powers to anyone at all). Therefore, the analysis is bad, according to the results of which no decisions were made PERSONALLY by the CEO.
At the same time, there can be a lot of decisions:
- Setting goals (in the field of quality).
- Orders to change the established rules for the implementation of processes.
- Personnel decisions.
- Technical re-equipment programs.
- Budget programs.
- Decisions on the directions of product improvement
- Changes in the company’s policy.
It should not be forgotten that the decisions of the analysis can also be corrective or preventive actions. The registration of which must correspond to the procedure for their implementation.
Decisions based on the results of the analysis can be:
- One-time or “current” (appointment of employees, revision of policy).
- Long-term implementation or “postponed”, i.e., “we want now, but there are no opportunities yet” (quality goals, budgets).
The recording of these decisions can be made by various methods:
- Orders and orders.
- Changes in documents.
And of course, as already note, decisions can be made not at once. But in the course of analyzing the data obtain. Gathered information. We found out that we have regular problems with brickwork. There is no reason to wait for the end of the year, we immediately made a decision:
- To recruit more experienced workers, to change foremen, to abandon brickwork (to give it to “subchiks”) or others. And there may be another solution.
- Collect additional data (because it may turn out that we are more or less good with masonry. But with a monolith it is very bad. Just the method of collecting data does not allow us to evaluate it).
Quality management system analysis Audit
This is where the value of another mechanism. The implementation of which requires the standard.
Becomes clear: It is necessary to conduct regular internal audits of the Quality management system analysis. When the analysis is distributed in time and only the boundary of the cycle is indicate. Beyond which all actions within the analysis should be perform.
(For example, once a year to analyze all the necessary. (And required by the standard) data and make all the necessary decisions).
Then, in this situation, the internal audit mechanism will ensure that during the established cycle. Indeed, all data has been collect and analyze at least once and all decisions have been complete.
Thus, the audit of the analysis will consist in checking whether we have not forgotten. To collect and analyze data from all previously identify sources. Whether the decisions made really lead to changes in the system, processes, and products or whether we have forgotten something. And most importantly, the internal audit should assess whether at least some funds are plan for all these decisions.
So, analysis is not a one-time action, it is a process, and the process is continuous, consisting of stages:
- Planning the analysis.
- Defining data and data sources.
- Defining data collection procedures.
- Implementing data collection procedures and summarizing the results obtained.
- Decision-making (and as one of the directions of data collection and the next analysis of the system.
Assessing the implementation of decisions made), and then …
- Implementation of solutions and in parallel:
- Planning analysis.
- Defining data and data sources, and so on ad infinitum…
Of course, all that was consider in the article is nothing more than a theory. That should be confirm by the practice of building analysis systems at a particular enterprise. The fact that all enterprises are very different. I believe, is understandable, as a result, the analysis systems at all enterprises will be different.