Risk and assurance - A business approach to managing quality

Here’s a bit of a thread started off with an innocuous question regarding the proposed redefinition of the word “product” in ISO 9000:2008. This meanders around a bit until Paul Staiano makes a profound point that got us thinking. Is there really a difference between a “process approach” to managing quality and a “quality approach” to managing quality? And if there is, what is it, what does it mean and which is best?

Well there’s no doubting that some quality departments are so wrapped up with their own methods, tools, techniques, definitions and auditor requirements that there is a risk that the whole concept of “business” gets blurred, lost even. Maybe that is where Paul was coming from. But even then, is it right to re-focus just on process? We recall a quote attributed to Winston Churchill (that we can no longer locate, so we’ll have to paraphrase) that went something like “no matter how beautiful the process, we do have to keep an eye on the result”. Can’t argue with that surely. What with our obsession with elegant solutions, we do have to ensure that they are, fundamentally, solutions, don’t we?

There was a great thread on learn sigma (14th November) that demonstrated how some people can get all hot under the collar as soon as a particular methodology is mentioned. So much so that the whole issue of context is completely ignored. Quality guys, eh? So where does that take us? Well somewhere along the line we need to raise the sites up a bit above all our ISO/EFQM/Lean/Sigma and remember what the business is trying to achieve and the fundamental dynamics of it all. The 7th November thread on Rachel Elnaugh’s blog brings us back to risk and reputation management. So are we about to propose that we actually need to adopt a business approach to managing quality? Worth thinking about. We’ve had a great article (an as yet undiscovered gem to most) on the high level concepts of risk and assurance posted in our main site members’ area for a little while now, we may as well share it with you. Take a look at it. It’s great sense, the foundation of a quality strategy you could say. But after reading it ask yourself the question “by the time we get to the operational implementation of quality, do we still remember where it all came from and why we’re doing it?”

In other words “do we adopt business approach to managing quality or a quality approach to managing quality?”

Dare we suggest that if the QA department was as fastidious with the calibration and periodic re-calibration of its strategy as it is with the re-calibration of its measuring instruments, that we’d all be a bit better off?

“poking the eye of quality … just to see what happens”