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Category: QMS Software

Certification, ISO Audit, QMS Software, Quality Management, Training

ISO 9001 Certification | Why Get Certified?

ISO 9001 Certification, lots of reasons…

This is a common question we’re asked.  This is a question you might be asking yourself right now.  And it’s a GREAT question folks.  The answer is simple, it depends.  I know that’s not a satisfying answer, but I’ll explain as I go on.

The “Right” Reason

I say the “right” reason a little tongue in cheek. The “Right” reason is to improve your business.  As a side note, getting certified always improves your business.  The simple matter of  fact is if an organization, such as yours, implements a good quality management system the benefits are nearly immeasurable.  Some of these benefits are listed below:

  1. Decreasing inefficiency with good work instructions
  2. Eliminating down time with preventative maintenance programs
  3. Minimizing on the job incidents, accidents, and injuries with legal compliance for EHS related issues and good reporting measures, also feeding back into Corrective Actions. (I know ISO 9001 Certification doesn’t include these things directly, but you’d be wise to take action now)
  4. Employee retention and decreased turnover. If an employee feels competent to do their job, and feels they are trusted to do their job, they will do a good job for many years.  Competence, Training, and Awareness programs can do so much good inside your organization.  Some employers worry that if they train their employees too well, they could leave and go to the competition.  For that, I’d ask you consider the old joke in the business world.  Two managers are talking about training their employees.  The first one asks, “Yeah, but what if we train them and they just leave?  The second one responds, “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”
  5. Keeping the sales team in check. I apologize if you are a salesman reading this, really.  When you identify your customer inputs up front, and verify that you can achieve them BEFORE taking the order, EVERYONE is much happier.  As the old adage goes, crap in – crap out.

I’m rather having fun creating this list, but I’ll stop here.  The benefits of Quality Management System are truly immeasurable.  The end result is always happier employees and happier customers, which translates to happier owners and shareholders.  Anyone knows that is a great recipe for success in your organization.

The “Often True” Reason

As I write this, I think on my years prior to certification as a QHSE manger and my life after certification.  If I’m honest, and I like to think I am, there is a cost associated with certification.  The first time I prepared a company for certification, I was an employee there, and we needed ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and OHSAS 18001, and we needed it within 12 months because two big customers had millions of dollars of work they would release if we got certified.  And we did, ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 and “compliant” to ISO 14001 sufficed.  This is often times the “True” reason your organization sought certification.  Your customers just didn’t give you much of a choice.  The costs associated are the obvious why you did not seek certification before, and some of those costs might be:

  1. First, at minimum you must pay a 3rd Party Registrar for your certification, and that costs time and money.
  2. There is a cost associated with the time it takes to write all those policies, procedures and work instructions. (You’ll be much better off once you do, you know that too).
  3. There is a cost in hiring a consultant (such as Texas Quality Assurance) to help guide you through the process more quickly and efficiently.
  4. There is a cost in monitoring and measuring the system on a regular basis to ensure folks are meeting their internal and external requirements.

Before you let the cost of getting certified get in your way, consider NOT getting certified.  In my case with, it would have cost my previous company millions of dollars. You weigh these costs for your own company.

Making your organization stand out

Often times your organization needs to differentiate itself, or possibly not get left behind.  This is not a bad reason to become certified, but it does present the most challenges.   Be wary of pressures to “Get ISO” as opposed to developing a lasting effective Quality Management System.  Its very true that sending in your Pre-Qualification paperwork to a large customer is met with MUCH less resistance when you can happily and proudly send in the PDF of your recent certification.  It is also dangerous to create a surface level Quality Management System.  One might think that the registrar would catch that, but not all registrars and not all auditors are created equal.  That is a WHOLE other topic to address.  I’ll say this much.  When I was shopping registrars to get my previous employer certified, I stumbled upon one that was a fraction of the price, half the days auditing, and local.  COULD NOT BE BETTER.  Something smelled fishy though.  So I asked for a copy of their certificate to verify their certification as a registrar.  It looked good, except at the bottom, that listed the URL www.somereallyongname…..com for the accreditation body that certified them.  Being an IT guy as well, I decided to dig a little bit.  Seems that they created a COPY of the real accreditation body’s website, and did so poorly, like really poorly.  They were 100% T-Total fake.  BE WARY.

Develop a Good QMS

Regardless the reason you have thought about certification, or have been forced for internal or external pressures to seek it, we want you to know you’re headed down a great path.  We also want you to know, you’re not alone in the problems you encounter along the way.  On a personal note, my favorite aspect of auditing is seeing the many creative and unique ways folks have solved the same problem.

Now as you’re reading this, if you’re like me, you’re asking yourself how do you quantify “good” for a QMS?  Well I’ll tell you.  A GOOD QMS:

  1. Is built on processes. I might write a blog on this to come, but a process is defined by Inputs, Outputs, Goals, Measures, and Controls.  It doesn’t matter how you skin the process map or diagram, it all boils down to these requirements.  Think process minded, and you’re in a good place.
  2. It can adapt to changes. Customer requirements change, the Standard can change, business demands can change.  If you’re having to create a 10 page MOC and update multiple documents just because your customer requirements changed for a single product, you might want to rethink the way you’ve laid our your methods of executing and monitoring your process.  A great place to start though is with good top-level process procedures and multiple lower level more instructional process work Instructions or SOP’s (the name isn’t so important, the function is)
  3. Responsibility is defined. Nothing is more aggravating for a line level employee, or even a supervisor, to not know who to report this to or turn that into.  Make it simple.  The more someone has to think, the more decisions they have to make, and the more dead ends they run into, the more and more they will NOT do the work.
  4. Give scopes and definitions. I just completed a four day audit where this could have helped a lot.  There was a lot of confusion over the differences, roles, and reporting methods for nonconformities, corrective actions, and management of change processes.  There is good reason for confusion, because there is a lot of overlap, and the standard has requirements for how to handle them.  The first response was to create multiple action items to meet all requirements, but that’s a waste of time to just be compliant.  As the founder of Texas Quality Assurance I hate nothing more than to see folks frustrated and struggling with paperwork for the sake of paperwork.  If you’re required to document something, there had better be value added in my opinion.  Sometimes that requires some creativity to meet compliance and business needs.

 

If you can follow these principles as you develop your QMS you’re on the right track to what we like to call “Elegant Simplicity”.  Its hard to complicate a process when approached in this manner.

But I digress.  The question at the start of this article is “Why Get Certified”.  Well you do it because you want to save time and energy as you go after bigger and better business, all while making sure your existing customers and employees are happier than ever.  The end result is always higher profits, more productivity, decreased waste and more competent employees running your business.

 

If you need help developing your Quality Management System, or you just need an objective second set of eyes, our consultants and auditors are ready to support you in your end goals.

 

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Certification, Environmental, Health & Safety, ISO Audit, Leadership, QMS Software, Quality Management, Training

What is Quality Management? | How do I “get” ISO 9001?

I’m Kyle Chambers.  I’m the founder and owner operator of Texas Quality Assurance.  I get asked by friends and family frequently about what I do..  I tell them Quality Management (Auditing, Consulting and Software Development) most commonly dealing with ISO 9001 ( I end it there, 18001, 14001, API, that will just muddy the conversational waters far too much ).  When I answer, it’s deer in the headlights a lot of the time.  I also run into a similar situation with prospective clients and top management of companies I work with from time to time.  Folks just don’t have a firm grasp on the what the process of getting and using ISO 9001 or any management system is.

Lets stat by answering some basic questions.

  1. What is Quality Management?
  2. How do I “get” ISO 9001?

What is Quality?

In this Quality Manager’s experience, here we go.  First, we need to define what “Quality” is.  There are many definitions, Dr. Google defines Quality as “the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.”  Maybe that’s correct, but it’s hard to understand.  And if it’s quality, it should be easy to understand and clear to see.  Texas Quality Assurance defines Quality as “saying what you’re going to do, doing it, and doing it repeatedly”.  Of course, lots of pieces of the puzzle make this definition of Quality a reality.  There are four principles that build up “Quality”.  Quality is all about integrity and hard work, after all isn’t integrity doing what is right when no one is looking?  Isn’t hard work sticking to the task even when it’s not easy?  And don’t you need to be proactive to maintain quality? You need to anticipate problems and devise solutions.  Then, if you’re really a Quality company, you’re going to deliver better than your customer expected, that is “High Quality”-when a spirit of generosity is applied to your work.

So let’s summarize, Quality is the essence of doing what you said you’d do, over and over again.  This, for us, is based on four principles.

  1. Integrity – Proverbs 28:6
  2. Pro-activity – I Peter 1:13
  3. Generosity – Proverbs 13:4
  4. Hard Work– Proverbs 11:24-25

What is Quality Management?

Now let’s talk about Quality Management.  It’s the act of applying our simplistic definition of quality and living the principles and infusing them in our organization.  We need a structure, we need a framework to work within.  It’s true, we could, on our own, from our intelligence, work history, and experience develop a framework to maintain our Quality Management System.  It is also true that this hard work has been done by others in a form that is Internationally Accepted.  We find this in the form of standards such as ISO 9001 (most common Quality Management Standard World Wide) or ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) or a variety of API Standards (American Petroleum Institute), etc…  For now, we will discuss ISO 9001.

First, let’s recognize ISO 9001 comes with its own set of Quality Management Principles.  You can read more about that here, Seven Quality Management Principles (ISO 9001:2015) . They are:

  1. Custom Focus
  2. Leadership
  3. Engagement of People
  4. Process Approach
  5. Improvement
  6. Evidence Based Decision Making
  7. Relationship Management

And these are the guiding lights of the standard.  The principles translate well to MOST ANY Quality Standard as they vary from industry to industry.

ISO 9001 Framework

ISO 9001 is all about providing a base framework to ensure Quality.  So how is that done you ask?  Well, it’s really quite simple and it starts with Documented Information.  If you’re part of a company, unless you’re government subsidized, you Do Something or Make Something valuable to other people.  Either EVERYTHING is done verbally, which is not efficient and not a good way to ensure quality, or you write something down.  Usually you write procedures to tell the next guy you hire how to do the work, or to remind you two years later when you forgot all the great things you came up with in today’s team meeting.  Along the way, you’re going to need to check to make sure the parts dimensions are correct, or a checklist to make sure you did everything you set out to do.  There is an old saying that I love, and it goes “Nothing good ever happened before pen was put to paper.” So, if you check dimensions or do a checklist, WRITE IT DOWN AND SAVE IT SOMEWHERE.  Your “Control of Documented Information Procedure” will tell you where that “somewhere” is.  It will tell you who is allowed to put it there, and who is allowed to edit it, and maybe how long you need to keep it.  For example, medical records must be kept for 40 YEARS past the last date of employment. So let’s say Jim worked for you for 40 years and had an accident his first week on the job, looks like you have to keep records for 80 years.  Good thing you have a well-documented system for keep tracking of procedures and records.  Beyond that, say you build a widget, maybe you make the best stapler in the world that always goes through all the pages and can staple 2 or 100 pages together effortlessly.  I’ve got news for you, you didn’t design an awesome stapler, you created intellectual property such as material specs, technical drawings, contracts with suppliers, inspection forms that are used during manufacture, and so on.  You created a whole heap of intellectual property.  If you don’t store it, protect it, and properly track changes and revisions, your business is going to be in serious trouble in a few years.  Documentation is where it starts.

“Shameless promotional plug” Texas Quality Assurance has developed software tools that manage ALL you’re documented information, and automates the process.  Check out TQA Cloud|QMS simplified .

Leadership

Once your documentation systems are somewhat in place, (they will evolve as your program does) it’s time to get to the work.  First, let’s hit on leadership.  I’m going to be honest, not all leadership “gets it.” They just know their biggest customer is pushing for ISO 9001, or some other standard, and they are ordering you to “get ISO 9001” as though it were a product to purchase at a supplier.  If this is your management team, you have my condolences.  All hope is not lost, though.  This places you in a WONDERFUL position to develop those dormant leadership skills and inspire your team to action as you show value for each process and each improvement.  Show them the light at the end of the tunnel, that fewer reworks, more efficiency, less headache and a more enjoyable job are at the end of the ISO Rainbow.  Now that “Leadership” is established, it’s time to get to work on developing a “Quality Policy” – effectively a mission statement for your Quality Management System, but this one has key objectives attached to it, so you can measure how good of a job you did next year.

Whether your leadership is leading the charge or you are, leadership is now involved, and we’ve got to make a plan.  Fail to Plan – Plan to Fail, that’s how the old axiom goes, and it is gospel truth.  The biggest threat to the Quality of your products and/or services is Risk.  This just goes without saying.  So from the get-go, make a plan to identify risk, and document how you addressed it.  We’ve presented just a few ideas in this article for you to read.  Risk Based Thinking – How to solve the problem during transition.  Next, you need a plan for changes.  What happens when someone needs to update the drawing on that awesome stapler?  Who gets notified?  Who approves the changes?  You need to identify these sorts of things.  Last, let’s make a plan to achieve the Quality Objectives.  This is your own personal scorecard to measure how great the system is.

Suppliers

Every company has at least one supplier.  I heard a story about a company that makes the concrete pads that are used for Verizon cell phone towers out in the middle of nowhere.  The company had only 2 employees, and only two suppliers (chicken wire and concrete).  Who would’ve thought that the concrete hey used was some special grade that was specifically selected and mixed for this purpose?  Even in this most simplistic example, there was a rudimentary supplier approval process.  You need to identify your suppliers, and grade them on impact to the quality of your organization, IE commodity (Office Depot, CDW) direct material, or Quality Critical.  Then, simply create a plan to get these different suppliers approved, monitor them, and re-valuate them on a schedule that makes sense for your organization.  Some companies opt to hire auditors to go check out critical suppliers on an annual basis.  But, for crying out loud, don’t make Office Depot go through a supplier approval process unless you’re an arts and crafts company and buy all your paper from Office Depot.

Competence and Training

You’re steadily marching forward, and now it’s time to talk about making sure folks are trained “Competence, Training & Awareness”.  By now, you’ve got some process procedures, and best practices identified.  Let’s make a matrix of skills folks have to have.  Let’s make sure EVERYONE has a job description.  Regularly review and make sure folks meet the requirements for their job.  There are few things that are worse for Quality AND Moral than an employee who doesn’t know how to do their job and doesn’t feel supported.  Nip that in the bud.

Production

With any Quality Management System, including ISO 9001, you’ve got to make sure folks do the work.  Production schedules are an amazing way to do this.  Get key folks together, get input, and get a plan together to meet deadlines and due dates.  Expect things to go wrong during this process becasue they will.  That’s OK!  You planned for Risk and can handle that!  Simple tools such as a “Nonconformance Report (NCR)” will track every little defect and detail of what went wrong.  After weeks or months, you can see trends in the data.  This might clue you in that these 10 defects might actually be related.  Here is where we issue a “Corrective Action Report (CAR)”.  The CAR is often quite similar to an NCR, but the goal is vastly different.  The goal with a CAR is to find the ROOT CAUSE and eliminate or at least mitigate it.

Monitoring and Measuring

All that’s left now is to monitor your processes-do inspections on your parts, checklists on services.  Go ahead and find out what your customers think along the way, after all aren’t they the judge of your Quality?  Once your organization is ready, it’s time for an Internal Audit.  An Internal Audit can be conducted 100% by your folks, 100% by an outside company such as Texas Quality Assurance, or some mix of the both.  The goal is to inspect every process, every department, and judge it against your procedures and the standard, IE ISO 9001.  The length of the audit can vary from a 2-day audit to a 10-day audit, depending on how many employees you have.  Once everything is said and done, it’s time to gather all the metrics collected during the year, including the results of measuring against the Quality Objectives and results from the Internal Audi and then put together a Management Review.  This document has some very specific requirements outlined in the standard, but provided you include these requirements and assemble all the great data your collected it should be a great snapshot of the health of your Quality Management System.

Internal Audit & Management Review

If this is your first round of Internal Audit and Management Review, then you’re likely looking forward to going for certification from a 3rd party company known as a Registrar.  There are many companies qualified to conduct 3rd party audits.  Be wary, not all are created equal.  Check out their credentials, sniff it out, check out the company that registered them.  If you need some official recommendations, I can recommend NSF, Dekra, and of course the big boys Lloyd’s Register and Bureau Veritas.  Its normal to be audited twice.  Once for a Stage 1 audit often called a “Readiness Review” and a Stage 2 “Certification” audit.  Stage 1 is generally 1-2 days and Stage 2 generally 2-5 days.  You can expect at least a month in between audits.

YOU’RE CERTIFIED

Now you’re certified, you got ISO 9001.  This is where continual improvement really comes into play.  Innovate or die, this is true for getting new products to market, and its true for your Quality Management System.  There will always be ways to improve, to streamline, and to get better employee engagement.  Take every opportunity, get out there and do the work.

 

We value your time and energy, and hope you can find something useful in these posts.  If you have a question, maybe a suggestion for a new post so you can learn more, or just stuck on a problem, click the button below for more information.

      Got a Question?  Need some help?     

Thank You!

 

 

 

Business Management, Environmental, Health & Safety, QMS Software, Quality Management, Small Business

Texas Quality Assurance – our roots

 

For those that don’t know me, I’m Kyle Chambers, Founder of Texas Quality Assurance. I’ve lived my entire life in Texas, raised in the small town of Italy Texas, pronounced “It-Ly” for those of you that don’t know.

My degree is in Management Information Systems, I got my CompTIA A+ certification in the 8th grade, safe to say I’m a Geek.  Many years ago I was volunteered to start a Health and Safety program for the company I was working at.  See I had been at a hospital doing help desk work and we all agreed it was NOT for me.  So I started at this small Gas Turbine Repair company.  Within the first year I had their IT needs more than met, website rebuilt and pretty much had worked myself out of a job-not a good position to be in for a newly wed man with a little 6 month old boy at home.  I prayed on what to do and later volunteered to get ISO 9001 and OHSAS 18001 certified in less than 12 months.  I quickly found myself working incredible hours, all 7 days of the week.  By now we had two little boys at home and this life was not working for a family.  I knew something had to change, and had to change fast.  I took the weekend off, spent time with the family, thought about it, and knew what I was going to do. I marched right into my VP’s office that Monday and told him I was going to take two weeks to shut my door, lock it and unplug the phone. Two weeks later I emerged with the first early version of what would later become TQA-Cloud.

I recall early on when I was working in my new position as “QHSE” Coordinator (catch that, the E was added to QHS) when I completed a Corrective Action Report I would wind up with 3 photo copies of the same ugly Excel spreadsheet made to look like a Word doc.  Each had notes from the person that completed one aspect or another.  It might take me thirty minutes to an hour minutes just to retype, print, assemble, scan, load, and log a CAR.  That’s not to mention the countless times I had to call, text, and email the supervisor to get the report completed.

When I went live with my first version of a cloud based QMS, I issued a CAR that morning to one production supervisor who admittedly only logged into the computer once a year to sign off on his insurance paperwork electronically.  Seeing as I was also the Systems Admin, I had verified it was true, he NEVER logged in, not once in the past 9 months.

Much to my surprise within 1 hour of issuing the CAR I got an email from the system informing me the CAR had been completed.  I just assumed I’d made a mistake in one of my workflows or filters or who knows what.  After pouring through all the geek logs and code, I just decided to open up the CAR.  Turns out he’d received the notification on his phone, filled in every field, even attached photos he took with his phone, and took a photo of his completed inspection report.

The fact is that people, even seemingly technology deficient people who cannot even be bothered to log into their computer, CAN engage in something soooo dull as a Corrective Action Report when you build easy to use tools that make sense to the company, process, and people.

Not long after this a consultant we were loosely using was amazed at the simplicity and detail of our system.  He had a client that was API Q1 and 6A certified.  As you know, if you lose your stamp, you pretty much lose your business.  He was given a 60 day ultimatum to get onto an electronic file system.  This unnamed client had more file cabinets than I’d ever seen-full of binder upon binder, and 3-4 partially functional computers in the office.  I really have no idea how they got things done but they did.  I showed up when 47 days were left.  So, it was off to the races to not only build a QMS from scratch, but build a server to go with it.  Today we use Office 365 as our backbone, but it didn’t exist back then.  With 6 days left till his next audit, we got him going.

As they say, the rest is history.  It’s a lot of hard work, prayer, struggle and innovation.  But, I feel truly blessed to be doing what I’m doing and thank God for the opportunity to do it.

It’s not about the QMS, its all about saving time and energy for what matters most to you.  Maybe that is a passion project at the office, maybe you just want to get home in time to see your son’s little league game, or maybe you’re crazy enough to quit a job in search of a dream so others can pursue their own, too.

 

We value your time and energy, and hope you can find something useful in these posts.  If you have a question, maybe a suggestion for a new post so you can learn more, or just stuck on a problem, click the button below for more information.

      Got a Question?  Need some help?     

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Health & Safety, In The News, QMS Software, Small Business

Oil and Gas HSE Podcast

#18 Oil and Gas HSE Podcast: Quality Management Systems and Eliminating Endless Paperwork

https://oilandgashse.com/quality-management-systems/

We spent some time with Kyle Chambers and Chad Henry of Texas Quality Assurance talking about quality management systems and how you can eliminate a vast majority of the paperwork associated to HSE in your business.

Learn how software can help streamline your processes, reduce the amount of time your employees spend waiting on documentation associated with their work, and keep your people safe by keeping them informed.

If you have a quality management system in place and need help getting ready for an upcoming audit, or you have a mountain of paperwork but don’t have the first clue about where to start digitizing it all, give Kyle and the guys over at Texas Quality Assurance a call. Without a doubt these guys can help you get sorted out and improve you operations along the way.

Click Play to Hear #018 Oil And Gas HSE Podcast: Quality Management Systems and Eliminating Endless Paperwork

We value your time and energy, and hope you can find something useful in these posts.  If you have a question, maybe a suggestion for a new post so you can learn more, or just stuck on a problem, click the button below for more information.

      Got a Question?  Need some help?     

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QMS Software, Quality Management

About TQA cloud (Cloud based Quality Management System)

TQA Cloud is a cloud based Quality Management System.

Document Approval Process Simplified

Approval Process – ISO requires approval and control of documents prior to issue and use.

  • We will be able to custom fit a system to your business that will allow only approved documents to be visible to pre-specified people. Only authorized users are able to approve a document in the system.
  • Very easily and seamlessly TQA cloud will allow you to meet the requirements of ISO for Control of Documented Information.

Version History

Version History – what do you do with the old versions of your policies, manuals, procedures, and forms? Do you store them in binders that also have to be controlled?

  • We can custom fit TQA Cloud to store EVERY version of the document indefinably, or to a specified rule. Documents are clearly displayed indicating the version and last date of modification.
  • The previsions versions are available to view within only a few clicks.
  • With the TQA Cloud you will no longer have a need for binders of previous versions, and you will, with only a few clicks, be able to restore a previous version as the next version, should need arise, to undo a previously approved change.

Document Indexing

Document Indexing – with many technical documents or procedures, 50, 100, 1000+ it can be quite difficult to locate the ONE document of interest.

  • With proper document indexing the ONE document can be located in as little as 2 or 3 clicks without the need to scan document by document.

Complex naming systems are A THING OF THE PAST. We can tailor the TQA cloud so your naming structures and conventions are simple and easy to use.

Simple, automatic naming systems will encourage users to add to the system and not develop it on their own.

User Based Access

User Based Access – Every employee who accesses TQA Cloud will be given a unique username and password. Their access to the system will be determined by this account.

Example – Accident Investigations or Medical Record may need to be available for management, but should not be visible to the receptionist. The user account for the receptionist would have no access to Accident Investigations or Medical Records.

TQA Cloud will be custom tailored to:

  • Your Business
  • Your Process
  • Your People

Key Benefits

  • We will develop the system to allow you to unify all your quality system documents.
  • The time and money savings cannot be over emphasized when employees have a single location to find and access quality system documents.
  • Documents are protected from unintentional tampering and deletion.
  • Easy access to all your quality system documents .

Document Library Web Apps

Store documents in Digital Document Libraries for:

  • Polices and Manuals
  • Process Procedures
  • Work Instructions
  • Job Descriptions
  • Technical documents
  • External Documents

Manage all the your core documents and all your supporting procedures in a simple, easy to access Document Library Web App.

Competence and Training Module

Training can be one of the most difficult aspects of ISO to implement. Benefits of the training web-parts:

  • Single location to store ALL training material
  • Single location to digitally locate all your training records and supporting documentation
  • Email alerts and reminders
  • Not Competent Report allows you to drill down to see who has and hasn’t been trained with a single click. Saving many hours of data mining the old fashioned way.

Quality Conformance

Easily store and access all NCR’s, CAR’s, and PAR’s. Benefits include:

  • Indexing that will allow you to sort through 10 or 100 records in only a few clicks. Sort by date, code, department, etc…
  • Store scanned copies of the NCR/CAR/PAR electronically and reduce the need to control physical copies.
  • Identify follow up time intervals.

What are your needs?

ISO implementation is unique to each company.

What are your needs?

What can we develop together to reduce the paperwork, prevent errors, and streamline the process?

A system that is easy to understand and use is one that will be used for years to come.

Business Management, QMS Software, Quality Management, Small Business

The value of automation

In the past few years we have developed a quality management system from the ground up in Share Point. At first we made the mistake of only  mildly using the power of SharePoint.  We managed our Nonconformance Reports (NCR’s) and Corrective Action Reports (CAR’s) by hand. Papers changed hands 3 and 4 times. It was a disaster. I decided to pull a couple of all nighters and created new lists, 100% electronic, to create, update, and close all our NCR’s and CAR’s. I scanned the old ones and re-typed hundreds of pages of text, but I got it done.

For the next couple of months this worked well enough, but there was considerable amount of time being spent on following up on NCR’s and CAR’s. I would spend at least 2 hours of my day chasing down engineers, managers, and supervisors to get them to update their reports and eventually close them out (weeks beyond their due date).

So again, I decided to pull an all nighter, but this time my goal was to automate the process. Each report is assigned to a responsible party, so 7 days before its due date and each day after, the responsible party gets a series of emails in their inbox alerting them to the items that are due. Not only do they get the email, but in the email is a hyperlink that takes them directly to the page to edit the report.

What used to take 2 hours a day with 80%+ being completed late, now only takes about 15 minutes of my day to review and sign off on, with 80% being completed on time or ahead of schedule now. In addition to that the supervisors and engineers now have a quick snapshot in their email that they are free to work on, on their schedule, not mine. Its a win win for everyone.

I cannot over emphasize the value of automating the flow of your data. When you make it easy for people to do their work, and provide proper positive motivation to do so, great things can happen.

Certification, Leadership, QMS Software, Quality Management, Training

Competence and Training | ISO 9001 | OSHA | ISO 14001

Competence and Training

In general, the standard states that “Personnel……shall be competent…”, which is a bit of simple, isn’t it?  Perhaps not.  You must ensure everyone has been trained according to a pre-defined matrix of sorts, evaluate competence, and then ensure everyone has been trained according to the plan you set forth.  Very similar to the well known plan, do, check, act.  Create a training plan, execute the training plan, check for gaps, and act on those gaps.

Not terribly difficult. Just work out what you need, see what you have, and then fill in the gaps. Check to see if it is working, and keep records to show you do it.

Often times the most difficult part is finding your gaps in your training program.  Perhaps your training manager was sick for orientation and 3 new employees were missed.  The traditional method requires cross checking each employee against a matrix to determine who has or hasn’t had a particular training.  This process can take hours upon hours to complete with the possibility of human error at each step in the process.

TQA cloud for ISO 9001 | OSHA | ISO 14001

The founders of Texas Quality Assurance knew there had to be a better way.  Now, there is!  It’s our one of a kind software solution, TQA cloud.  TQA cloud allows you to identify gaps in your training processes quickly and easily, in as little as 2 clicks of the mouse.  Nothing could be more simple to audit your competence and training program.

Our competence and training module allows Quality/Health-Safety/Training managers to store all training materials, training matrix and training records in one place.  But before that we’ve developed the “Required Training Report” a report all businesses need, but often spend far too much time developing.  Updated daily, we take the hard work out of the process.  Any training type and any international standard can utilize TQA cloud, whether it is for OSHA compliance, ISO 9001, OHSAS 18001, ISO 14001, API, etc…

Check out our YouTube channel to stay up to date with the latest demos of our software solutions.

 

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Certification, ISO Audit, Leadership, QMS Software, Quality Management

We knew there had to be a better way…

Traditional Quality Management Systems don’t work

I’ll tell you a little about us. TQA was developed out of a need to save time and energy managing your quality management system (QMS).

We knew there had to be a better way to manage a quality system, so we set out to develop it from the ground up.

In our previous careers, we found ourselves spending far too much time processing paperwork, following up on CAR’s and performing long audits of our training and calibration records.

Before TQA, we found ourselves going in earlier, staying later, and still never being able to stay caught up. We knew there had to be a better way.  For instance, I would normally spend about 5 hours a week simply trying to get paperwork ready to get our CAR’s closed out properly.  That same process is about 10 minutes a day now.  The key was not only sending the QMS to the cloud, but setting up methods of communication using the Cloud tool to make it much, much more than a place to save and store data.

At TQA, we have an extensive background in IT, as well as QHSE. So, we maximized on those skills and developed TQA Cloud.  TQA Cloud centralizes your Quality Management System in an easy to use web based software that saves hours a day managing your day to day functions as a Quality Manager, while ensuring you are more compliant to your required management standards.

A new kind of QMS

Our solutions include:

  • Cloud based Quality Management Solutions TQA Cloud | QMS Simplified
  • Quality Consultation (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, API Q1 & Q2)
  • Internal Auditing
  • Training

We simplify document control, revision control, and the approval process.  Then, we centralize it to a single location that is searchable and user friendly.  You can easily take a library of more than 2,000 inspection documents and, with just 2 clicks, locate the single file you’re looking for.

We’ve developed a Learning Management Tool that is fully incorporated into the system that not only lets you track competence records such as Safety Trainings, Quality Trainings, Tool Box Talk records, Weld Qualification Records, etc, it also gives you a snapshot of who is missing required trainings.  We make it easy to see who has or has not been trained with just a couple of clicks.

Our goal, our honest passion with this business is to save Quality Health & Safety professionals time and resources for matters most, be it a project at the office or to take time to go to your kid’s little league game.  We want to make that option more available to you.

At the end of the day, it’s all about meeting the needs of your business, your process, and your people.  We want to save time and energy for what matters most to you.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you and your business save time for what really counts

 

We value your time and energy, and hope you can find something useful in these posts.  If you have a question, maybe a suggestion for a new post so you can learn more, or just stuck on a problem, click the button below for more information.

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Certification, QMS Software, Quality Management

Benefits of ISO 9001

Benefits of ISO 9001

ISO 9001 Certification is not just suitable for large organizations, but also small businesses that will benefit from utilizing a well-built and well implemented Quality Management Systems such as TQA Cloud that will save time and resources. Texas Quality Assurance provides ISO 9001 Certification Services for the greater Houston and surrounding areas.

ISO 9001 is the internationally recognized standard for the quality management of businesses worldwide. Businesses go for ISO 9001 certification because it brings various benefits for them. When a company is  ISO 9001 certified, it means that the company has passed a rigorous certification process and is prepared to deliver quality products and services to their customers.

Top 5 Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification:

  1. Meet Customer Requirements
  2. Get More Revenue and Business from New Customers
  3. Improve Efficiency, Reduce Waste, and Save Money
  4. Increase Customer Satisfaction
  5. Improve Consistency within Your Organization

Top 5 Benefits of ISO 9001 to your customers:

  1. Improved quality and service
  2. Delivery on time
  3. “Get it right the first time” attitude
  4. Fewer returned products and complaints
  5. Independent audit demonstrates commitment to quality

With the QMS in place and working for you, the organization is focused towards the Quality Goals. Management is provided with data on a continual basis and able to see progress or lack of progress towards goals and take appropriate action. The organized, scheduled process of conducting Management Review ensures that this evaluation takes place. It provides the mechanism of reviewing goals and performance against goals on a scheduled basis and allows action to be taken based on the evaluation.

 

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      Got a Question?  Need some help?     

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QMS Software, Quality Management

Electronic Management of Document Control

Electronic Document Control – Moving away from the massive binders and network file shares

Introduction to Electronic Document Control

I’ve spent many years as an IT & QHSE Manager. While our formal ISO 9001 & OHSAS 18001 was still years away, the need for a consistent method to store, approve, track, and retrieve our official documents was necessary. Before I began the work, many previous systems of kingdom building had occurred, so I had my work cut out for me.

I inherited a mass of binders, loose papers, spreadsheets tracking documents that could not be found, and a mountain of file shares with no determinable order. The question was immediately what to do to sort, recognize, and store, and what to even bother sorting organizing and storing. How could I ever attempt to sort though over 10,000 documents/records and nearly 100 binders to find what is useful and relevant? Well I couldn’t, and still can’t. However, if some people could find what was useful to them, and if enough people could locate what was useful to them, and we had a central store of information with an easy to understand system, we could make it happen.

Having a background in IT, I opted for SharePoint.  Since it was a small company, I opted for the free version, WSS 3.0 (today we operate on SharePoint 2013). The power of SharePoint to quickly build a site, control access, approval, and create workflows to maintain up to date communication cannot be under estimated.

How to Organize the Data?

We opted for a simple structure that users could upload relevant documents or records to be converted to documents. This included roughly the following categories.

  1. Policies Procedures Manuals and Handbooks
  2. General Documents
  3. Inspection Documents
  4. Drawings
  5. Specifications
  6. Training
  7. Other specialty libraries and lists for various specific purposes

In addition we created network shares, one department access, and the Technical Drive. We moved ALL data stored in personal data kingdoms to the Technical Drive. The technical drive is specifically non controlled, with no official documents, but a massive resource to develop new documents, and find useful information.

The Departments drive was created to give our department leadership the ability to share within their team with the security of knowing it was not public for everyone to modify and access. This also gave a great deal of security to out accounting team knowing their files we for their eyes only (no more masses of records shared over email). Once we had the drives established, very quickly users began to sort through 15 years of data and isolate the good, while filing away the bad. Within short order, they were able to upload the relevant documents for permanent storage in SharePoint.

Benefits of SharePoint – Electronic Document Control

  1. Fast and easy to deploy new lists, libraries and sites
  2. Easy control of user access – After creating a couple of new security groups, we can now control Read, Edit, Contribute, Approve within the list. This allows for a very custom security access where documents cannot be deleted, and only specified users can approve but not modify the library (when required).
  3. Custom workflows – each document is auto numbered by a custom workflow, there is 0 risk of duplicate naming. In addition, when documents are edited a workflow generates an email to the originator of the change, and when published for approval, the email is automatically sent to the appropriate manager for approval.

In Conclusion

Today we are able to confidently and reliably operate from the most recent version of all our documents (very vital when dealing with tight customer and OEM tolerances for multi million dollar machines) with the confidence they have been properly reviewed.

In a previous intermediate system, spreadsheets were used to track documents while the SharePoint system was in development.  We quickly found that about 5% of our documents were mislabeled or could not be located easily (generally though shortcomings in Excel).  Today that is a non issue for all approved documents. Within 4 clicks we can sort though over 1,000 documents to the single document we are searching for with 100% assurance we will locate it.

A system such as this requires a LOT of forethought. We went through many intermediate stages that were not fully successful, but each built upon the last. This type of electronic document control is not easily obtained but is worth the effort to achieve it. I suggest it for anyone making the leap from paper or spreadsheet tracking to a better method (perhaps in SharePoint) to spend twice as many hours on planning and interviewing as you plan to spend on implementation, it will be well worth it for you and your users and department leaders.

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