Critical Analysis of Quality Management System Essay

1. Summary During the presentation, our group developed a quality management system for a higher educational library. It covered a quality management system model, quality management principles, quality management documentations, and advantages and disadvantages of this quality management system. 2. A result of presentation session See more: how to write a good critical analysis essay A quality management system(QMS) can be defined as: ‘A set of co-ordinated activities to direct and control an organisation in order to continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its performance.’ (businessballs, 2000) It can be seen as consisting of all components of an organisation which are dealing with the quality of services and products. A effective quality management system not only makes an organisation more efficient or customers focused, but also it will improve all processes from production to services in the organisation. The aim of developing this quality management system is to improve the service quality of a higher education establishment. The university library has been chosen to be implemented by this new quality management system. The university library, which combine with conventional production and online system, is an important part of higher education processes. As one of university community services, it finds out a unique way to measure and assess the procedures in order to ensure the quality of services offered to users and satisfy them. This QMS is based on existing quality management systems such as ISO9001:2008. And it starts with collecting customers’ needs and organisation’s needs in order to bring useful activities, follows a specific plan and customer focused strategy to fully make a use of involved people, resources and partnerships, and works out the processes which brings customers outputs such as products and services. Also, customers will give feedback which can be performed to analyse, measure and improve the whole system. For completing those procedures, the system also involves corrective action teams, sub processes system, measurement tools and gold targets strategies to make sure the entire system will be completely operated and under control. 3. Modifications and developments of QMS During the implementing phase, the biggest weakness of this QMS could be lack of communication between involved people in the organisation. According to this situation, the process communication will be involved in this QMS model. Also, about the documentation, this session will be more specific of how system will work under this QMS. †¢ Requirement Management 1) Customer needs Library should be aware of the customer demands and ensure the requirements are achieved to match the communications. For the university, the students and teachers’ requirements should be collected during all the phases of operating the library. This is based on communicating with customer in relation to requirements of environment, products and services. Therefore, a regular investigation or survey would be essential for library to understand the current and future requirements from students and teachers. 2) Organisation needs Library should care customer needs whether they are under organisation’s control or not, and combine with the organisation needs to increase the usability. It requires a balance between customer needs and organisation needs as how the library can present an effective arrangement of usability ans feasibility, so that it would meet all the requirements that customers want, but not over design for customers down to get lost. Also, a regular investigation will be achieved with customer needs changed. †¢ Strategy & Plan 1) Strategy Strategy is based on the customer needs and expectations and defines the environment management. It sets up a baseline of QMS that how to operate a library, clarifies the purpose and scope, and specifies the significant work environment for a library. And it is always a target during implementing the library. Every component in the system corresponds to one or more strategies. When requirements are maintained, relevant strategies will be maintained as well. 2) Plan The planning of QMS is carried out to reach the customer needs and integrate the maintenances during planning and implementing under strategies. For library, it presents all the requirements which combine with the strategies and operations that should be applied into this system. When changes take place, library staffs can figure out how to modify and keep the other components still working, so that the maintenance will not impact the entire library system. †¢ Resource Management 1) Involvement of people Library should ensure full of people participate in the QMS to product requirements in order to support the strategy. And the participation in library is about training and empowering staffs, develop the knowledge and full potential of working people, team working, and a specific plan of these activities to support the strategy and plan, so that staffs can work more efficiently and offer better products and services to students and teachers. 2) Resources & Partnership Library should manage the external partnerships and internal resources to improve the QMS. For the library, external partnerships includes university that belongs to, or companies that cooperates with. Internal resources includes infrastructure such as hardware: buildings, equipments, and materials, software: technology, information, and skills. This QMS will offer an way to library staffs of working more effectively and flexibly with those resources. †¢ Process Management Library should manage and improve the processes to support the strategy and validate the outputs of processes such as products and services. That means the processes are implemented and improved in order to realise the products and services to fully satisfy the customers and increase final value of satisfaction index or profit. For library, staffs should check all the processes whether work well or not, and products and services carefully in order to increase the quality. †¢ Communication Management ‘Communication is a two-way process. As well as the need to gain support from top management and the staff during the launch of a quality management project, it is also important to enable staff to provide feedback on how to improve its operation.'(eurogeographics, 2000) In the library, it requires staffs to carry out the easiest and fastest way to communicate with the others either to find out the support or bring feedback to develop the system. †¢ Customer Satisfaction Library should measure the performance whether it meets customer needs and continually improve the efficiency of QMS in order to enhance customer satisfaction. During operating the library, the feedback of customer should be collected usually to know what should be improved of QMS, and deliver a better operation. It also requires a regular investigation and survey to realise. 4. Advantages of QMS For this modified QMS, it shows more effective and flexible for operating. Also, it maximises the working potential and efficiency of staffs and minimises the waste of operating processes. Compared to rival system: BS EN ISO9001:2008, the advantages of this system would be: †¢ This QMS is developed for the higher educational library, it will adapt overall performance for operating the library, and benefit the continuous improvement of quality of products and services. Compared to ISO9001:2008, this system will be easier to establish and realise above achievements. †¢ Depending on ISO9001:2008, it requires the staffs supply a good quality of service, but does not mention how they can achieve that. In this QMS, it requires library staffs carry out full potential to empower and develop knowledge about this QMS, and train for team working to bring a better quality of services to students and teachers. †¢ ISO9001:2008 would bring a large cost to implement in a higher educational library. For this QMS, it will not need to change so much to fit current library, so that it decrease the implementation cost, reduce time and resources wastes, and increase management efficiency to reach next level. †¢ This library QMS will satisfy requirement management better than ISO9001:2008. It collects both customer needs and organisation needs and combines these two requirements in order to deliver a better performance not only for customers, but also for involved staffs and university. This process would obviously increase customer satisfaction. 5. Disadvantages of QMS However, the limitation of this QMS is developed for the higher educational library only. It will not fit for large commercial organisations. On the other hand, every QMS requires to improve continuously with the passing of time. It will increase the wastes of cost and time in any way. 6. Conclusion Quality management system provides a management framework and principles that library can fully control the system to deliver better products and services. Although a quality management system will bring such disadvantages to organisation, it is still an effective measure tool because of advantages being more than disadvantages. 7. Reference †¢ BS EN ISO9001:2008(2009):†Quality management systems – Requirements†, 4 – 8 BSI Standards Publication †¢ BS EN ISO14001:2004(2009):†Environmental management systems – Requirements with guidance for use†, 4 – 8 BSI Standards Publication †¢ Eurogeographics(2000) â€Å"HANDBOOK FOR IMPLEMENTING A QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN A NATIONAL MAPPING AGENCY†[online] Available from: †¢ Businessballs(2000) â€Å"Quality Management Systems†[online] Available from: