> Mr. Mark James Smith wrote:
>
> > Hello
> >
> > Am trying to put together a Quality Improvement Plan for work.
> > Not exactly sure where to start.
> > Can anyone suggest how to layout a Quality Improvement Plan. Or
> > perhaps,
> > show me one that they may have written.
> >
> > If so would love for you to email me stuff. Thank you.
> >
myemail@ozemail.com.au
> > Thanks
> > Mark
Mark,
The title is the key. I had to do this when I was in
industry,
and I offer a couple of things for your consideration.
1. The Malcolm Baldrige criteria is something you should
become
familiar with. I was a Baldrige Examiner and I believe the
criteria is something well worth studying.
2. Conversely, I'm not impressed by ISO criteria, 9000 or
otherwise. I had a chance to work on a committee coming up
with
an ISO standard and whatever you see as an ISO standard is
definitely minimal standard stuff.
3. Before you embark on a quality improvement program, you
have
to assess where you are now, how you measure yourself, and
then
decide what you want or need to improve, and why. Don't try
to
take too big a bite the first time around, especially if you
have
not been accustomed to using metrics. The why is a big
issue. You
will be investing resources in the quality improvement
program,
so know why you want to do it.
4. Quality characteristics have to be meaningful and
measurable.
If you can't measure it, you can't tell if you are there or
not.
Be very mindful of the difference between measuring because
it is
measurable and measuring because you need the answer.
5. Quality improvement is very process-dependent. The
process has
to do two things for you. Provide stability and provide the
measurement data. Otherwise, it's not very helpful. If you
can't
gain some level of stability, the measures mean little.
6. The quality improvement process(es) has to be adopted
and
supported by management, and institutionalized across the
facility.
You need before and after data to show if and how
improvement is
made. You need the data to show what the improvement bought
you
or your customer, hopefully both.
7. Try to estimate the cost of improvement and do a
benchmark to
get an estimate of improvement benefits. This helps to keep
you
focused when things don't go perfectly. When Hughes
Aircraft decided
to do an improvement program to move from Level 2 to Level 3
in terms
of software process maturity, they had a one-time investment
of $450K
in the program, but had a $1.2M annual return on that
investment.
8. Don't expect overnight results. The Hughes program I
just
mentioned took 18 months.
9. Choose any tools you pick for the improvement program
carefully.
Know the value of the tool and the environment in which it
has to work.
If you are not sure, get a trial use license. This goes for
software
as well as hardware.
Jim Dobbins