Process approach to Quality Management

What is the process approach to Quality Management?

The process approach is based on the assumption that the operations and management of any business can be described as a set of inter-related processes. If each process and its interfaces with customers and other processes is effectively managed then this is more efficient than the previous approach which was to manage by department.

The reasons for this are:

• Processes often span the work done by several departments and the departmental interfaces are more effectively managed
• Unnecessary hand-offs between departments and duplication of effort can be eliminated as they are made obvious when processes are planned
• Measuring process performance gives management a clear over-sight of the effectiveness of the business operations
• Customers purchase products and services which are the output of processes

The standard defines a process as: "Set of interrelated or interacting activities which transform inputs into outputs"

Put simply, the day to day activities of a business can be set out in a simple flow chart of processes as shown in the example opposite. Processes for Your own company and processes may be different or use different terminology and in that case you should chart the processes as you see them.

In our example the 'product realisation processes are shown in blue boxes. These are the day-to-day processes we perform to deliver our product or service to the customer. Depending on what products or services our business actually does, the 'value adding' activities could be: manufacturing, finishing, maintaining, or just directly selling to customers.

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The pink boxes show the 'support' processes required to support the 'product realisation' processes and the business premises and systems and include some business planning and maintenance activities.

The diagram opposite shows the key processes we have identified in the business and how they interact and interface with each other.

Effective Quality Management comes by ensuring that we have suitable controls and checks planned into each process.

So far we have seen the quality system made up of day-to-day or product realisation processes and some support processes, but a successful business also needs effective management processes too.

ISO 9001: 2000 identifies a number of management controls to be applied to the quality system, these include setting policy and objectives and continually improving performance, planning processes and resources (to eliminate potential problems) and ensuring competent personnel, controlling documents and records, managing and correcting mistakes, faults and complaints. Audits and management reviews are particular processes to check and monitor the effectiveness of processes and improvements.

The inter-relationship of management processes are typically illustrated below:

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more about the process approach