Management Commitment is Essential

The 'take-home' message from the Lean workshop was that initiatives like Lean cannot succeed without commitment from upper levels of management. The same can be said for implementing ISO 9001 in an organisation.

If management are not prepared to commit time and resources, or are not prepared to make changes, then the rest of the organisation will not see the project as important, and it is doomed to fail. New and astounding results from production are not going to come from doing the same-old, same-old in management.

A typical business is broken down into departments that compete and conflict with each other, while at the same time needing to serve each other to get the job done for the customer.  Although the different parts affect each other, each department is focussed on their own performance measures rather than the goals of the business as a whole. One dollar saved in one department may cost three dollars somewhere else.  The change looks good from one perspective but has actually made things worse for the business.

Successful Lean businesses reorganize into Value Streams that allow everyone to see 'the big picture' and focus on the important measures of success like sales, delivery, quality and profit.  Each value stream is cross functional and takes care of the entire customer interaction from start to finish.  They may be focused on different market segments and the objective of each value stream is to optimize value to their customers.  Organisational change at this level clearly requires management commitment. 

Value stream management puts the focus on the customer, which sounds very like ISO 9001. One of the first steps in implementing a quality management system is to map out the key processes that affect the product or service delivered to the customer – a process map.  An exercise that is very similar to the Lean tool of value stream mapping.  Lean and ISO 9001 fit well together.

If your business has the necessary commitment from management, Quality Systems Network has the expertise to help you implement an ISO 9001 compliant quality management system and to transform your business into a Lean enterprise. 

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