5 Signs That Your Quality System Is Dysfunctional – Take The Quiz!

by Sandra Gauvin

Have you ever noticed that when you start a new job, it’s so obvious what processes need improvement? But then overtime you begin to adapt to the culture and you tolerate the inefficient and dysfunctional practices….sometimes just to avoid conflict. Then over time, you don’t even notice the problems as much….

Take the Quiz below to see if your Quality System is dysfunctional. If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the questions, then the good news is, you’ve just been presented with an improvement opportunity.

1. Does your Standard Operating Procedures exceed 5 pages? Whenever you have procedures that ramble on and on, you really have to question the value to the people using them. Take a look at your procedures and identify the critical information that needs to be in them, then strip way all of the excess information. A great way to format your procedures is by using a system known as Information Mapping , which will typically reduce the size of your procedures and make them easier to read.

2. Do you require more than 3 signatures for all document approvals? If every document requires more than 3 signatures, regardless of the risk associated with the document, then you’re adding too many approval gates that will increase the approval cycle time and will bog down your process and frustrate your people. Most documents should only require an Owner signature, Quality signature, and a Manufacturing Signature, with the exception of higher risk documents requiring additional signatures.

3. Do you have people dedicated to just nonconformance investigations and Quality staff dedictated to their approvals? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to this question, then you have the greatest opportunity for improvement that can impact the bottom line of your company. If you have so many nonconformance’s that it requires a dedicated staff to work on the investigations and approve the reports, then you’re not getting to the real root cause. If you don’t have a formalized trending program, then now is the time to start so that you can quickly identify issues and conclude if you’ve truly gotten to the root cause by reducing the number of nonconformance investigations (assuming you haven’t added any new products to your pipeline).

4. Do you attend so many meetings that you don’t have time to do your job? Take the time to document all of the meetings that you attend, along with their purpose, frequency, time, attendees, etc. and see if there are any redundancies….if yes, then propose to management that certain meetings be consolidated and show evidence that the same information is being covered in other meetings.

Also, really take a look at the purpose of the meetings because they may indicate that there are systemic problems that can be resolved if you get to the root cause. For example, If you’re meeting daily to determine if an observation is truly a nonconformance, then you need to look at how well your procedure is written, if nonconformance’s are clearly defined, and evaluate the overall training a person receives. You may find out that if you put a qualification program in place that it eliminates the need for the daily meetings.

5. Do you track more than 30 metrics each month? You know the saying ‘the more the merrier’?, well when it comes to metrics, more is not necessarily better. Your metrics should measure important aspects of your business that indicate how well you’re performing and when actions need to be taken. I’ve written a 23 page special report ’Boost Your Quality AND Operational Performance By Following These 3 Simple Rules‘ that’s includes valuable information about performance metrics that you really must read….you’ll also receive a monthly subscription to the Current Quality Newsletter.