Is Quality Management System a Waste?

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption on our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider on our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

This is a quote attributed to "Mahatma" Gandhi, the famous icon of non-violent protests all over the world. As all things in old world, this has the gender bias, so here is the redacted version for the female customer.

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. She is not dependent on us. We are dependent on her. She is not an interruption on our work. She is the purpose of it. She is not an outsider on our business. She is part of it. We are not doing her a favor by serving him. She is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so."

I did a little find-and-replace exercise, for the word customer with #QMS, which is short for Quality Management System, and it looks pretty good.

QMS is the most important visitor on our premises. QMS is not dependent on us. We are dependent on QMS. QMS is not an interruption on our work. QMS is the purpose of it. QMS is not an outsider on our business. QMS is part of it. We are not doing QMS a favour by serving QMS. QMS is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.

There is a popular misconception that ISO 9001 is a wasteful exercise in practice or implementation. Whether someone gets the certification or not, the systems are pretty good, and it all starts with a good quality management system.

Quality doesn't happen by accident; it has to be built in, and that is the key to quality assurance and a cheaper way to higher quality. Quality by quality control, or inspection after the fact, is the old way and the costly way to poor quality!

This is also the reason to build scientific systems and procedures that make the work easy, consistent and of highest quality, with full workforce engagement AND, at lowest cost. I am teaching, FOR FREE, a new method to build systems and procedures.

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