Bridging the Gaps in Your Quality Management Procedures

If your business is striving to prosper and acquire more customers by providing quality products or services, then get your approach to quality management adherent with ISO 9001 standard. It is the international standard for the quality management system (QMS) achieved by millions of businesses worldwide. It specifies the regulations or guidelines for quality management that organizations need to adopt for ensuring quality and reliability of their products or services. But how to get your quality management approach compliant with ISO 9001 regulations? Well, bridging the gaps in your QMS to achieve ISO 9001 compliance is a systematic process. To figure out the steps involved in the gap analysis, you need support from a quality assurance services company. You can also do it yourself with a fully competent team having proper understanding of the regulations and practices specified by ISO 9001.


While bridging the gaps in your quality management framework can hquality assurance serviceselp improve your overall performance and score a great number of loyal customers, here are some considerations for doing the gap analysis. Take a look.


Deciding Scope and Structure of the QMS

Most organizations have a functional framework for quality management but it is not clearly defined and meets only the basic requirements of the ISO 9001.  It can be said that such an indistinct quality management framework adds little or no value to the internal processes and products/services of the business. Gap analysis first helps in expanding the scope of your quality management framework and structuring a comprehensive QMS that covers all requirements of the ISO standard.  Also, for knowing the scope of your QMS, you should understand the unique context of your business regarding quality management. It implies going deep for assessing the potential quality risks as well as opportunities in your business to ensure establishing a QMS that deals with them.


Aligning the QMS with ISO 9001 Requirements

The second step for your gap analysis is evaluating the differences in your quality management processes with those specified by ISO 9001. While you have to understand the context of your organization, quality objectives, opportunities and uncertainties, it is then necessary to implement the processes that support all of them. So mapping the processes with ISO 9001 requirements is necessary to achieve compliance and get certified. Most of the times, organizations conduct internal reviews or audit programs to identify the discrepancies in the processes of their QMS with ISO requirements. Those reviews enable them to resolve the gaps and reduce the risk of nonconformities.


Getting Resources Ready for QMS Implementation

Another essential part of the gap analysis is deciding the gaps between the business strategy needed for QMS implementation and your resources’ capability. It is the responsibility of the top management at the centre of your organization to strategize the implementation process with necessary resources. However, they must be able to support their strategy with the resources available or the capacities of the resources. Failing to identify the gaps and developing an unrealistic strategy can stall the QMS implementation, increasing both time and costs for the process. However, gaps in competency of human resources/employees can be resolved with proper training and by instructing them about their roles or responsibilities. 

 

Bottom Line

Performing a gap analysis does not definitely mean that your present approach for quality management is ineffective or failing but they definitely need improvement. With realization of the gaps in your approach, ISO standard’s compliance and resources, you can seek to establish a sound QMS that matches well with your business context, goals, improvement opportunities and risks. However, the task of gap analysis cannot be fully conducted with an internal team of quality officials as biasness may exist. People who are involved in creating a system can disagree to any of its weaknesses or may be reluctant to point out the discrepancies because that proves their incompetence. It is hence suggested to consult with a third-party quality assurance services agency with assessment experts who can perform the gap analysis of your quality management procedures.  Make sure to have an agency with experience in ISO certifications so that they can help you in discovering the gaps in ISO 9001 compliance.


Also Read: Simple Guidelines to Structure Your ISO 9001 QMS Documentation


Contact Details:

Business Name: Compliancehelp Consulting, LLC

Email Id: info@quality-assurance.com

Phone No: 877 238 5855

Location: 5686 S Redwood Rd, Salt Lake City, UT 84118, USA

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