Quality Control

Quality management ensures that an organisation, product or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement.Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. What a customer wants and is willing to pay for it determines quality. It is a written or unwritten commitment to a known or unknown consumer in the market. Thus, quality can be defined as fitness for intended use or, in other words, how well the product performs its intended function.

Principles

The International Standard for Quality management (ISO 9001:2015) adopts a number of management principles, that can be used by top management to guide their organisations towards improved performance. Worldwide Interpreting and Translation prides itself on following the below:

Customer focus

The primary focus of quality management is to meet customer requirements and to strive to exceed customer expectations.

Rationale

Sustained success is achieved when an organisation attracts and retains the confidence of customers and other interested parties on whom it depends. Every aspect of customer interaction provides an opportunity to create more value for the customer. Understanding current and future needs of customers and other interested parties contributes to sustained success of an organisation 

Leadership

Leaders at all levels establish unity of purpose and direction and create conditions in which people are engaged in achieving the organization’s quality objectives. Leadership has to take up the necessary changes required for quality improvement and encourage a sense of quality throughout organisation.

Rationale

Creation of unity of purpose and direction and engagement of people enable an organisation to align its strategies, policies, processes and resources to achieve its objectives 

Engagement of people

Competent, empowered and engaged people at all levels throughout the organisation are essential to enhance its capability to create and deliver value.

Rationale

To manage an organisation effectively and efficiently, it is important to involve all people at all levels and to respect them as individuals. Recognition, empowerment and enhancement of competence facilitate the engagement of people in achieving the organisation’s quality objectives.

Process approach

Consistent and predictable results are achieved more effectively and efficiently when activities are understood and managed as interrelated processes that function as a coherent system.

Rationale

The quality management system consists of interrelated processes. Understanding how results are produced by this system enables an organisation to optimise the system and its performance.

Improvement

Successful organisations have an ongoing focus on improvement.

Rationale

Improvement is essential for an organisation to maintain current levels of performance, to react to changes in its internal and external conditions and to create new opportunities.

Evidence based decision making

Decisions based on the analysis and evaluation of data and information are more likely to produce desired results.

Rationale

Decision making can be a complex process, and it always involves some uncertainty. It often involves multiple types and sources of inputs, as well as their interpretation, which can be subjective. It is important to understand cause-and-effect relationships and potential unintended consequences. Facts, evidence and data analysis lead to greater objectivity and confidence in decision making.

Relationship management

For sustained success, an organisation manages its relationships with interested parties, such as suppliers, retailers.

Rationale

Interested parties influence the performance of an organisations and industry. Sustained success is more likely to be achieved when the organisation manages relationships with all of its interested parties to optimise their impact on its performance. Relationship management with its supplier and partner networks is of particular importance.