Quality Policy:
5 Practical Steps for Effective Implementation
What is a Quality Policy?
A quality policy is an organization's official statement on its commitment to the promotion, maintenance, and improvement of quality. Communicated to all employees and made available to business partners and customers, it is a brief document stating how the organization’s values and goals are aligned with industry standards and compliant with regulations on quality.
Below are 5 steps to ensure that you effectively implement your quality policy within your organization.
- Review existing quality policy
Review the organization’s quality policy and check if it still aligns with the current company goals and if it is still relevant to operations. Determine if the company will benefit from adhering to the latest standards on quality and gather employee feedback regarding the quality policy statement by conducting surveys. Based on the information gathered, decide if amending or keeping the quality policy would be the best course of action for the organization. - Get employee buy-in
Conducting employee surveys regarding the quality policy encourages employee buy-in and engagement in its implementation. Ensure that the quality policy is communicated to and understood by all staff across the organization (as required by international quality standards). Provide refresher training to reinforce the proper implementation of the quality policy. - Conduct quality checks
Verify adherence to the quality policy by conducting regular inspections or internal audits. Measure performance and watch out for trends that impact quality. Analyze the results of inspections and implement action plans to correct non-compliance. - Provide relevant training
Watch out for new best practices in the industry or updates to existing quality standards and provide the needed training for staff. The results of quality checks can help formulate training programs that address opportunities for improvement discovered during inspections. - Continuously improve quality
Opportunities for continuous improvement are discovered not only through internal quality checks but also through customer feedback. It is vital for the organization to address these opportunities for improvement as part of the commitment to quality as stated in the policy. Properly enforcing the quality policy also helps the organization maintain certain industry certifications.iAuditor, the world’s most powerful quality and safety inspection app and software, is a tool that can help organizations across different industries reinforce commitment to quality by proactively catching non-compliance to quality standards and regulations, implementing corrective actions, measuring quality performance, watching out for trends across multiple sites and teams, automating recordkeeping, and helping prepare for certifications.
Verify adherence to the quality policy by conducting regular inspections or internal audits. Measure performance and watch out for trends that impact quality. Analyze the results of inspections and implement action plans to correct non-compliance.
Try iAuditor's ready-to-use templates:
GMP Compliance
Use this Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Compliance Checklist to evaluate your company’s adherence to manufacturing protocols such as quality control procedures. Perform facility walkthroughs of all relevant systems.
ISO 9001 Gap Analysis
onduct a gap analysis to determine up to what extent your company is already meeting ISO 9001 requirements and where the emphasis of your implementation efforts should be. Assess the context of your organization, quality control procedures, etc.
5S Manufacturing
Identify the unnecessary items stored in the manufacturing site and ensure machines, equipment, and tools are kept clean and in working order. Improve business productivity through workplace cleanliness and efficiency using this 5S checklist.
Layered Process Audit
Site supervisors and operations managers perform scheduled LPAs on the production floor and assess the conformance of staff to quality control procedures. Determine conformance with a reference image of the ideal scenario for a specific question.
Incoming Inspection
Validate the quality of purchased raw materials based on set acceptance criteria. This incoming inspection checklist has been designed to make it easier for quality inspectors to specify required actions based on the identification tagging system.
Check Sheet
Classify product defects according to type, location, or cause and indicate how often they occur. Quality control inspectors can easily identify the product to be inspected, take/attach photos with annotations of defects, and sign off with a digital siganture.
