Our Quality Policy

James H. Burrill, 2/10/97

It is my hope to bring the ISO 9001 standard into focus for everyone so that you have some idea of how the specifics in the standard relate to what you are doing. To accomplish this I have decided to start at the beginning and continue to the end. Along the way I will discuss the key paragraphs in the standard. To make this understandable using the medium of ASCII text, I will need to use some conventions. I will delimitdisplay sentences and phrases from the standard in bold type. Quotes from other sources will be indented. My prose will be written in the normal format. My poetry will be written using moon letters.

4.1 Management Responsibility

4.1.1 Quality Policy

The supplier's management with executive responsibility

The use of the word "supplier" in the standard is meant to refer to the ISO 9000 compliant company providing a product or service. In our case, supplier means our company. The "supplier's management with executive responsibility", therefore, refers to our company's senior managers who normally meet on Thursday morning in the large conference room.

shall define and document its policy for quality, including objectives for quality and its commitment to quality.

(Note the use of the word "shall". That's how we know that it is a requirement. Suggestions use the word "should".) Our quality policy is meant to satisfy this requirement by specifying our objectives and commitment.

[Our company] is committed to becoming the best source of [area] software, systems, and services. We accomplish this by meeting or exceeding our customers' requirements and expectations as measured by customer satisfaction, customer complaints, and reported problems. We are committed to continually improve the company's performance against these measures.
Quality Policy

The first sentence of our quality policy specifies the objective. We want to become the best in our field. We're not trying to be the best company in the world or the best company in computers. We want to be the best supplier of imaging related software, systems, and services. The commitment is not to start out as the best. Rather, it is to continually improve our performance as seen by our customers in an effort to become the best in their eyes. This is the commitment made by our senior management.

We must take quality beyond customer satisfaction to customer delight.
Colby Chandler (Eastman Kodak)

The quality policy shall be relevant to the supplier's organizational goals and the expectations and needs of its customers.

Our company's products have always been in the area of imaging and image understanding. Becoming the best in these areas is relevant to our company. We don't have any hidden agenda such as cornering the silver market or replacing Microsoft.

Our customers can expect us to provide imaging systems now and in the future. Our customers will also expect us to improve our products. We are committed to doing this by using a feedback loop. That is, we will monitor how our customers perceive what we are doing and we will modify what we do to better match what our customers want. That's what the second and third sentences of our quality policy say.

If [quality] is aimed at anything, it is aimed at winning and keeping customers - keeping them delighted.
Barry, Managing the Quality Transformation, McGraw-Hill, 1990

The supplier shall ensure that this policy is understood,

It is this requirement that has been the instigator for these essays of mine. It is why I have repeated our quality policy so many times and why we have it on-line on the first page of our quality system documentation. This is why the procedures that make up our quality system must be accessible by you.

implemented, and maintained at all levels of the organization.

Again, the quality system is the responsibility of senior management. It is not their responsibility to implement the quality policy but to see that it is implemented. Quality will improve only when everyone is motivated to try to improve it. When everyone works on it. It is senior management's responsibility to motivate you and to provide you with the resources that you will need in your efforts.

Leadership is not so much the exercise of power as the empowerment of others.
Bennis and Nanus, Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge, Harper & Row, 1985.

We must take quality beyond customer satisfaction to customer delight.

Colby Chandler (Eastman Kodak)

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