115
10
Quality Operating System (QOS)
Overview
An organization with a solid quality operating system (QOS) has an excel-
lent chance of being a superb supplier. The reason for this is that a good
and solid QOS determines the direction and culture of any organization. It
means commitment of the management to improve continually and satisfy
the customer. It means that management knows what the key processes of
the organization are and what the key indicators for those processes are.
Mandatory elements that management must understand in order to generate
a good QOS are
• Customer integration: All the customer’s needs are integrated into
the products and relevant processes. This is achieved through per-
sonal interrelationships with customers as well as by handling all
customer information in a professional way.
• Embedded quality in processes/projects: Quality standards in pro-
cesses and projects lead to improved quality because of standard-
ized processes, quality gates, and preventive measures. Process
discipline and stability are key prerequisites for quality.
• Consequent supplier management: There is absolutely no room for
compromise in supplier management. Inadequate supplier quality
can only be corrected by systematic management, that is, selection,
assessment, classication, development, and phasing out.
• Business-driven quality planning: Planning quality means analyz-
ing future developments and potential problems and taking appro-
priate preventive steps. Precise objectives, activities, and quantitative
indicators are specied with the aid of benchmarked targets.
• Focused quality reporting: The current quality status is the subject
of regular reports, identical in structure to the planning. Reporting
is based on a focused summary of key performance (process) indica-
tors (KPIs), concrete quality incidents, and cause-effect analysis of
possible quality problems.
116 Quality Assurance
• Broad qualications on quality issues: All employees must have
skills and abilities appropriate to the activities they perform. Gaps in
experience are analyzed and are subject to competence management.
Experience is reinforced to ensure know-how over the long term.
• Continuous improvement: Objective of continual improvement is
to continuously optimize the market and cost position. Pragmatic
proven tools include CIP, Kaizen, Lean, Six Sigma, and similar
approaches. Employees from all organizational units are involved.
• Spirit by management involvement and commitment: Managers
bear full responsibility for and are committed to quality, monitoring
quality and taking part personally in solving critical quality prob-
lems. Examples of both superb and unsatisfactory quality are openly
published internally.
• Control and support role of quality manager: Quality managers sup-
port, control, and deal with conicts. The independence of the qual-
ity department and individual quality managers in the processes
and projects is guaranteed and heavily supported by executive
management.
• Commitment to measurement: Management must be committed to
data-driven decisions. In order for this to happen, the data must be
appropriate and applicable to the situation. Furthermore, the data
must be analyzed with the appropriate and applicable method. If
you do not measure, you do not know where you are, and if you do
not know where you are, you cannot improve.
Of course, for these elements to be part of the culture, there must be a
passion for excellence throughout the organization by everyone, beginning
with the management leadership. Typical issues recognizing excellence
should be at least the following:
• Zero tolerance for defects: All activities must be directed toward rig-
orous avoidance of any failure in the products and processes. The
focus must be on zero defects and 100% customer satisfaction as a
general goal on everything that the organization does.
• Customer satisfaction: All activities must be customer focused and
committed to developing a successful partnership from the very
beginning, applying effective project and process management
throughout the whole lifecycle. Long-term customer satisfaction is
the standard of quality. This translates to loyalty and, by extension,
increasing business.
• Continual improvement process: The principles of continual
improvement must always be present and relevant for the com-
petitiveness of the organization. Deep root-cause analysis, fast and
117Quality Operating System (QOS)
systematic improvement, and best practice sharing as well as inno-
vations are the foundation to increase quality and productivity.
Without the attitude for continual improvement, the organization
will not improve consistently over the long run.
• Top issues of waste in process (WIP): Waste, rework, and rejects in
process must be identied and either eliminated or minimized—
especially the top 10. Initiatives and benchmarking as well as all
kinds of improvement activities must be supported and imple-
mented. The implementation must be with clear measurables and be
systematically tracked to monitor the improvement.
• Entrepreneurial spirit, empowerment, and involvement with a
strong commitment: The organization that aims for excellence must
encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, empowerment (delegation with
both authority and responsibility), involvement, and commitment
by management to all employees by continuously and systematically
developing and utilizing their knowledge, experience, and skills.
• Conscious use of resources: Organizations aiming at excellence must
be cognizant of their own resources. Since all resources are nite,
appropriate and applicable allocation of these resources must be devel-
oped for optimum efciency. Resources are not limited to material. In
fact, they may include employees, shareholders, suppliers, communi-
ties, administrations, and other relevant parties to build relationships
as well as to generate an attractive return on investment (ROI).
Quality Operating System
Thus far, we have discussed the need for quality and some key items of
concern for the quality discipline as we move into the twenty-rst century.
Whereas these are indeed important, we must also focus on how we bring all
these together. The focus that brings everything together is indeed the QOS.
A QOS is a systematic, disciplined approach that uses standardized tools
and practices to manage business and achieve ever-increasing levels of cus-
tomer satisfaction. A generic model of a QOS is shown in Figure 10.1.
As complicated as this denition sounds, in fact it is not. All organizations
have some type of a QOS, but it may be known as
• Total quality control (TQC)
• Total quality management (TQC)
• Total control system (TCS)
• Quality management system (QMS)
118 Quality Assurance
• Quality reporting system (QRS)
• Quality improvement process (QIP)
In essence, QOS is a system that helps organizations to improve both internally
and externally—internally by identifying appropriate metrics for improvement
in their key processes and externally by focusing on their customer’s needs. In
terms that are more generic, QOS is a way of doing business consistently, a sys-
tematic approach that focuses on both common and assignable causes to prob-
lems, used in all areas of the organization with a focus on improvement, a way
to correlate process measurables to customer measurables, a way to implement
preventive actions, a system that encourages data utilization for decisions, and,
above all, it forces the organization to work as a team rather than individual enti-
ties. QOS is an optimization approach to management rather than a suboptimiza-
tion approach for certain departments at the expense of others.
As important as the QOS system is in any organization, it must be recog-
nized that unless management believes and exercises empowerment at the
source, QOS cannot be implemented. Empowerment, of course, is personal
ownership and commitment to take initiatives aligned with the objectives of
the organization.
Customer
expectations
Predict
external performance
Define key
internal
processes
Measurables the key
internal processes
Trend the
measurables
Constant
employee
awareness
Select
Identify
Track
Establish
correlation
Verify and
adjust
P
Plan
Improvement
system
A
D
Act Do
S
Study
S
Standardize
Control
system
A D
Act Do
C
Check
FIGURE 10.1
Generic QOS model.
119Quality Operating System (QOS)
Having given an overview of the denition of QOS, let us look at the com-
ponents of the model itself for a better understanding. We start with cus-
tomer expectations. It is very easy to conceptualize what the customer wants,
but in order to know for sure, the organization must know who the customer
is. Any organization has many customers and everyone has a unique situa-
tion or requirement for their product or service. Sure, we can say that the cus-
tomer wants defect-free product, but that usually is a minimum requirement.
Some other requirements may be value received, timing (was the product
delivered in a timely fashion?), and many more. All these depend on whether
the customer is perceived as an immediate, intermediate, or ultimate cus-
tomer. Each one has its own needs and requirements and, depending on the
denition of customer, the expectations and feedback will differ.
The second component of the model is to select key processes. The opera-
tive word here is key. This means that only selected processes must be iden-
tied and monitored. This is the Pareto principle (80/20 rule). The process
may have many subprocesses, but it is imperative that we identify the criti-
cal processes that will make the product or service to the satisfaction of the
customer. For example, in manufacturing we may identify the assembly,
machining, and plating. For staff processes, we may identify training, atten-
dance, and accounts receivable.
The third component of the model is to identify the measurables for these
key processes. A measurable is a way to gauge how well a specic aspect
of the business is doing and the degree to which the processes of the busi-
ness meet customer needs and requirements. The focus of this component
in the model is to be able to standardize and then control the measurable.
We standardize the measurable so that we have consistency, stability, and
predictability. Once those measurables are standardized, we move into the
control mode to make sure that they stay consistent. The two most common
types of measurables are
1. Process (production or operation focus)
2. Result (customer focus)
A variety of examples of potential QOS measurable are shown in Table10.1.
The next key item in the model is tracking the trend of the measurable that
was identied in the previous step. This is a very important step in the sense
that the control process began in the previous item, continuous; however, the
monitoring is more formal and systematic. One may use many specic tools.
Here we mention the most common:
1. Flow chart: To make sure that we understand the process and we
follow it.
2. Check sheet: To make sure that data are appropriately collected
and recorded. One must remember that without data, you are just
another person with an opinion.
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