Quality Principles

The International Standard for Quality management (ISO 9001:2008) adopts a number of management principles that can be used by top management to guide their organizations towards improved performance.

Customer focus

Since the organizations depend on their customers, they should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and should try to exceed the expectations of customers. An organization attains customer focus when all people in the organization know both the internal and external customers and also what customer requirements must be met to ensure that both the internal and external customers are satisfied.

Leadership

Leaders of an organization establish unity of purpose and direction of it. They should go for creation and maintenance of such an internal environment, in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization’s quality objective.

Involvement of people

People at all levels of an organization are the essence of it. Their complete involvement enables their abilities to be used for the benefit of the organization; however, the ultimate key decisions are made by the project manager.

Process approach

The desired result can be achieved when activities and related resources are managed in an organization as a process.

System approach to management

An organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its quality objectives are contributed by identifying, understanding and managing all interrelated processes as a system. Quality Control involves checking transformed and transforming resources in all stages of production process.

Continual improvement

One of the permanent quality objectives of an organization should be the continual improvement of its overall performance, leveraging clear and concise PPMs (Process Performance Measures).

Factual approach to decision making

Effective decisions are always based on the data analysis and information.

Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

Since an organization and its suppliers are interdependent, therefore a mutually beneficial relationship between them increases the ability of both to add value.

These eight principles form the basis for the quality management system standard ISO 9001:2008.