Quality Manual
Back to ISO 9000
Quality manuals define the quality management system - its beliefs and values, its personnel, its standards, the processes, the checks the documentation and control elements, the inspection, testing, preventative, correction, audit, certification and review mechanisms.
A manual will contain the policy statements on quality and the procedures and practices of the organisation. Product specifications as a whole may have restrictions on access as these are confidential and trade secrets. For a large complex organisation, there mayeven be a directory of quality manuals!
Authoring
The authoring and up-dating of a quality manual is a major documentary and publishing problem. How items are authored is a major concern in and of itself- the authors may be managers, designers, even operative staff. The definitive entry into a manual however needs to be authorised and controlled.
A hand-written manual may suffice in a very small firm - but a good word processing facility is a minimum requirement. A WP package with the capacity to design forms - fill in the spaces - is a great asset. The data content of the quality manual is "re-useable code" if sentences, paragraphs, tables and chapters can be extracted then they can be assembled (cut and paste) into other documents. These will include tender documents, contracts, instructions for suppliers and operating instructions for company teams working on assignment anywhere in the world.
Form Design
Starting from scratch, the design of the forms is an activity requiring expertise. It is no use re-inventing the wheel if competent document layouts exist elsewhere. Examine standard forms or buy in the expertise of a consultant who can analyse particular needs and design user-friendly forms. Before many forms can be designed the product or procedure will have to be analysed in the first place. Such analysis and design involves:
- identifying the elements and naming these
- plotting sequences and relationships between tasks
- definiting the data items that must apply, or be recorded at each stage
- etc
Forms design is the end product of the analysis of the functional performance of a system and charting/specifying these. This is typically the work of someone with the skills of information systems analysis.
Up-dating and Security
When process or practice specifications change - the manual has to be up-dated. Up-date anomalies (some copies of the manual are not up to date) and redundancy (the manual contains unnecessary, duplicated and out-dated data) - are two problems that the quality manual administrators must attend to.
Forms/database software specifically to support the publishing process is available. The software is modestly priced and ranges from single (PC) user to multi-user (local area network). The latter would enable every processing station in a firm to be able to access the manuals and indeed enter data on quality performance and action.
With a computer-based quality manual - only one copy of the quality procedures and data exists. This resolves the problem of update anomalies and redundancy. Regular back-ups of the quality manual data however must be made to separate storage media/devices. Thus if the computer was stolen or data files corrupted/damaged - then the firm has a copy of its quality data.
BOLA is maintained and developed by Chris Jarvis