These days ISO 9001 has become such a pervasive term, and while some might not know exactly what it means, almost everyone has seen the words pop up on the sides of manufacturers, machine shops, and other industrial facilities.

But while the quality management standard specification can apply to literally any business in any industry, many are still surprised to imagine that its scope goes beyond the walls of discrete manufacturers and processing plants. Indeed, it even applies to municipalities. Except, instead of describing a process for how a bolt is tightened, in the context of a municipal corporation, ISO 9001 might dictate how a customer service call is handled. In either case, the underlying methodology for describing the processes will ultimately be similar.

Those in the municipal sector who are looking to develop or improve a quality management program shouldn't miss our our feature webinar, Quality City: The value of ISO 9001 and Quality Management in Municipalities. This joint webinar will be hosted by Intelex and David Forget, the Town of Ajax's manager of quality service. Ajax was the first municipality in North America to achieve full ISO 9001 certification, an accomplishment that David spearheaded.

Among other things, including specific examples of Ajax's situation, David will discuss:

• The benefits and ROI that flow from implementing a quality management program within a municipal organization.
• The challenges municipalities can expect to face when rolling out a quality management system.
• Getting buy-in for a quality program from senior management.
• Why seek ISO 9001 certification for your municipal corporation.
• The relationship between streamlined quality management and improved business performance.

Whether you work with a  municipality directly, or in any other service-based organization, you won't want to miss this opportunity. Reserve your spot over at the webinar registration page.

Don’t forget: the first set of rules issued under the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) are set to take effect in just over a week, on July 3.

The new rules give the FDA the authority to hold food products that may be contaminated or mislabeled and require organizations importing food to disclose whether another country has rejected or refused the product. The rules are designed to ensure the FDA is better equipped to target foods that may pose a risk to public health.

The new regulations are in addition to the Act’s current scope, which allows the FDA to:

• Demand records of other food products that have a reasonable probability of serious adverse health consequences If the FDA finds a “reasonable probability” food has been misbranded, adulterated, or capable of generating serious adverse health consequences, it may issue a mandatory recall.
• Boost protection of whistleblowers who report violations or testify.
• Increase the frequency of inspections and use a risk-based model to prioritize inspections.

As more FSMA rules come down the pipes in the next 12 months, and as the new requirements take effect next week, it is up to all U.S. Food and Beverage companies to take action now, by implementing food safety management systems, documenting detailed food safety plans, focusing on companywide hazard identification and risk mitigation (along the lines spelled out in HACCP), and prepare for a higher frequency of inspection.

Though environment, health, safety (EHS) and quality management issues are often handled by individual management systems, the guiding principles behind each of these areas share a common link — W. Edwards Deming. The American quality guru is most commonly associated with the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle, an iterative problem-solving process used to resolve quality issues and improve business performance. But it is important to remember the foremost EHS and quality management standards — including ISO14001 (environment), OSHAS 18000 (health and safety) and ISO 9001 (quality) — are all rooted in the PDCA or Deming Cycle.

Businesses that encounter regular overlap between these areas ought to consider the potential benefits of an Integrated Management System (IMS). An IMS coordinates all of an organization's procedures, systems and processes within one complete framework and, in an ideal scenario, allows the organization to operate as a seamless whole, with unified objectives across all departments.

But a fulsome IMS is not for every company. Any business of any size does not necessarily stand to benefit from adopting an integrated management system. Instead, businesses should integrate management systems not just for the sake of integration, but where there is a clear business benefit that can be tied to integration. The principle benefits of integrated EHS and quality management include both cost-effectiveness and collaboration between intrinsically related EHSQ concerns.

Imagine a business that uses a hypothetical hazardous material in the manufacture of a product at one of its plants and consider how this hazardous material can create near equally significant issues within each EHS and quality realm:

• Environment: The hazardous material may be toxic to the environment at large and necessitate consideration within the organization’s air emissions monitoring.
• Health and Safety: The same hazardous material may compromise the health or directly endanger the lives of employees in the plant.
• Quality: The handling and use of the hazardous material may be governed explicitly by existing quality standards.

As an example, consider last year’s string of recalls associated with the cadmium content in children’s toys manufactured in China. The extended direct exposure of factory workers to the highly toxic heavy metal would necessitate an internal health and safety policy governing safe exposure and use. Also, given the targeted end user of the toys are children, quality management mechanisms would have to ensure the cadmium content of the toys did not exceed federally regulated maximums affecting the markets in which the product would be sold. But further, since improperly disposed cadmium is known to leech into and contaminate groundwater, provisions would have to be put into place to ensure proper disposal of the material at the plant level.

Tomorrow we’ll discuss the pros and cons of implementing an IMS.

Any student of W. Edwards Deming or quality management in general is no stranger to the term ‘Continuous Improvement’.

Over here at Intelex, we use the term an awful lot, as we believe that, though it is most frequently cited in conversations on quality management, it is more of a meta-process that can be applied to all aspects of business management: environment, health, safety, governance…anything!

But a bit of an internal conversation was struck up recently as we noticed some people prefer ‘continuous’, while others use ‘continual’. So we thought we would do a little research and find out which term was correct, or if they represented two ways of stating the same thing.

Here’s a comparison chart outlining what we found (with an albeit highly unscientific methodology):

So, it’s clear “Continuous Improvement” is far more widely used, and more accurately describes the premise.

But as Jon Miller points out in this blog post on the topic, "continual improvement" – that is, improvement in stages and marked by interruption – is a better description of what businesses actually practice. Even the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach, endemic of most management systems wherein continuous improvement is a central premise, is itself an iterative process, signified by stages and interruptions.

On the other hand, "continuous improvement" is a better description of what businesses ought to aspire to achieve. Is it possible? I believe so. I believe that when technology is leveraged, when real-time data is communicated seamlessly to operators, when trending and forecasting tools enable truly predictive, proactive management, then continuous improvement – in the true sense of the term – is achieved, or at least lies within reach.

According to experts, though the connection can seem distant or indirect, proper training has a clear impact on quality, just as it has a clear impact on every aspect of business.

As business process design and ISO 9001 expert Chris Anderson noted in a blog post on the top ten root causes of business problems, poor training is the number one source of business issues. Two decades of business management led Anderson to place poor training ahead of poor methods, poor employee placement and poor engineering and design on the list.

“People don’t make mistakes,” Anderson insists in the post. “Systems make mistakes.”

And just as product and service quality issues arise from systemic deficiencies, employee performance — and its impact on quality — is correlative to the integrity of training management systems.

Training and quality are best thought of as peas in a pod — inseparable elements that should always be mentioned in the same sentence. Even if an organization feels it is 100 per cent where it needs to be from a quality perspective, training is essentially what got it there.

Best-in-class companies have thorough, streamlined training management programs (most often leveraged by software) that deliver measurable results. For those that overlook thorough training, it might be due to lack of time and other resources. However, such an oversight often leads to harsh ramifications: product recalls, brand damage, injuries, fatalities and bankruptcy.

Jason Fitzpatrick is down at the MSDO conference in Ajax where David Forget, Manager of Quality and Special Projects, from The Town of Ajax just presented on the town's quality system, ISO 9000 registration (they were the first municipality in North America to be fully registered), and their use of Intelex as a tool in their Quality Management System (QMS).

David spoke on how the QMS not only enhanced customer service to the town's citizens but also benefitted the organization's work environment for its employees. After a recent poll of the Town's citizens, 96% of people wanted the town to maintain ISO registration.

To learn more about how a quality system can benefit your municipality or service organization, give Jason a call at 416-599-6009 or toll free at 1-877-932-3747.

Earlier this week the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the first set of rules under the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), legislation signed earlier this year which gives the FDA sweeping powers to prevent food safety disasters.

The two new rules, which take effect July 3, are pretty logical preventive measures that, in all fairness, probably should have been implemented a long time ago. The new rules are as follows:

• Order on Administration Detention of Food: The first new rule gives the FDA the authority to hold food products that may be contaminated or mislabeled. Before now, the administration only had the right to detain food when it had sufficient evidence it was mislabeled or contaminated, thereby presenting a threat to humans or animals. Now if the FDA even suspects contamination or mislabeling, it can detain the product.
• Rule on Imported Food:  Organizations importing food now have to disclose whether another country has rejected or refused the product. With this information, the FDA will be better equipped to target foods that may pose a risk to public health.

The new regulations are the first in what will be an ongoing stream of new rules determining how the FSMA affects organizations across the U.S., but also adds to the Act’s current scope, which includes legislative components that took affect earlier this year when it was signed into law, including the following:

• If the FDA determines a reasonable probability of serious adverse health consequences in any food product, it may demand records of other food products affected in a similar manner.
• If the FDA finds a “reasonable probability” food has been misbranded, adulterated, or capable of generating serious adverse health consequences, it may issue a mandatory recall.
• Whistleblowers who report violations or testify benefit from increased protection from any form of reprisal.
• The FDA has already increased the frequency of inspections and also uses a risk-based model to prioritize inspections.

As more FSMA rules are come down the pipes in the next 12 months, and as the new requirements take effect July 3, it is up to all U.S. Food and Beverage businesses to take action now, by implementing food safety management systems, documenting detailed food safety plans, focusing on companywide hazard identification and risk mitigation (along the lines spelled out in HACCP), and prepare for a higher frequency of inspection.

Intelex is psyched to be participating in the first annual Tech Manufacture XPO all day today, Wednesday, May 4, 2011.

The event is an opportunity for professionals in the manufacturing technology field to connect with experts, watch webinars, listen to speeches and podcasts, and learn about the latest developments, trends, tips and tools in the world of manufacturing tech.

Visitors to the intelex booth have a chance to win an iPod Nano touch 8GB!

Drop by our booth for a chat! We'd love to have you.

Having the flexibility to identify, contain, and adapt to foreseeable and unforeseeable issues is critical to a comprehensive response plan for quality nonconformances and product recalls. Proactive, responsible companies that implement comprehensive vendor/supplier/contract manufacturer evaluation programs and performance tracking systems as components of an overall quality management system (QMS) will boost preparedness and ensure smooth responses to otherwise devastating product recall scenarios.

Any business — large companies especially — should select contract manufacturers in the same way they select suppliers and other vendors: with thorough research, hand-on inspection and rigorous screening.

A good way to think of it is this: Treat suppliers, vendors and contract manufacturers as if they are your own facilities. Even if they are not providing you with an end-user product, if your company name is going to be on the final product, your customers will view you as responsible and you will be ultimately accountable for the defect.

The alternative – basic adherence to minimal regulatory requirements – does not constitute the wisest PR and quality assurance philosophy. Recall that five years ago, a nationwide recall on children’s toys containing lead paint—and manufactured in China—cast a pall on the integrity of the country’s quality standards. It also forced American toy giant Mattel to recall more than 18 million products and face significant brand damage.

Even entrenched brand images can be dealt significant blows by product recalls, especially when those recalls affect the lives and health of children. For quality managers at companies that rely on contract manufacturers and suppliers overseas, such situations are a call to action: a proactive corporate ethos on quality management — and supply chain traceability in particular — will not only save time and costs long term, it will ensure products exceed minimal regulatory requirements and avert potential public relations and brand image crises. A comprehensive QMS that enables enhanced supply chain traceability and supplier relationship management is the hallmark of such an approach and will inevitably save costs in the long run.

Many businesses make the mistake of approaching training as a one-time or ad hoc responsibility: employees are trained when they are hired and rarely, if ever, retrained or trained for new competencies.
Businesses cannot adequately embrace the much sought-after ideal of continual improvement until they incorporate continuous training into their business models.

It is essential to establish a training program that helps every employee realize their potential, and in turn helps the business realize its potential. Such programs should be constantly revisited and always altered due to employee, manager and customer feedback. It should be a continuous process.

One aspect of continuous training should be a program that regularly schedules learning sessions with employees to build, develop and diversify their skills and knowhow as they grow with the company.

No discussion of continuous improvement would be complete without reference to W. Edward Deming, the man responsible for quality control and its most critical mechanism, the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle or Deming cycle. Not only can the Deming cycle be applied to training and training management programs to mitigate negative impacts on quality; the famous statistician’s focus on curbing the role of checklists and giving all employees a sense of meaning behind their responsibilities can be applied to achieve integrated training.

It’s the cultivation of the “curious” side of an employee, and it is achieved by using Deming’s model to get employees to think beyond their immediate jobs. For example, if you’re operating a press, you probably retain a lot of knowhow beyond just press operation. That is, you probably have a better sense of how to better the quality of a product or the experience of a customer.

But it can be very difficult – in large organizations, especially – to incorporate continuous improvement into training programs without the right tools to streamline training management and ensure employee competence.