Quality Management Systems

Quality management systems are a good foundation for any quality journey.Today, many standards and third party certification programs are very popular, such as ISO-9001:2000, TS-16949, COPC and CMM.The ISO-9001:2000 is a generic standard and can be applied by any company.However, industry specific quality management systems are gaining popularity, such as TS-16949, COPC and CMM for Automotive, Call center/BPO and software respectively. Large number of companies are already certified or in the process of certification.Some of the questions raised by these companies regarding six sigma are:

• We are ISO-9001:2000 certified can we implement six sigma?
• We are planning to implement CMM level 5 and should we wait till the assessment is complete?
• If we implement six sigma, do we still need to go for COPC?

Quality management systems are basic systems to stream line the processes in the company.All these standards also expect the company to adopt a continuous improvement approach and demonstrate improvements in all processes.Further, they are not prescribing any specific philosophy to be adopted.There are several continuous improvement philosophies, such as Kaizen, TPM, QC, BPR etc.Six Sigma is also a continuous improvement philosophy and fully meets the requirements of all these quality management systems. Integration of Six sigma initiative with all the above quality management systems is discussed in the following sections – in general and specific to each standard.

Six Sigma and Quality Management Systems

Six Sigma can be implemented by certified companies and also by the companies just starting the implementation of the quality management systems.

Six Sigma approach can be used to improve the effectiveness of the quality management system.One of the limitation of the quality management systems is the company will be focusing on developing large number of procedures, work instructions (typically the number could be few hundreds).However, realistically no one can focus on so many areas.Six Sigma approach is based on pareto principle, only 20% of these procedures are responsible for 80% value addition or risk.However, either internal or external auditors might not have audited most of these critical procedures even once in 10 years period.Some of them could be very critical processes from the company point of view.It would be a good idea to categorize the processes into critical, major and minor from customer perspective and define the type of control accordingly.

Further, in developing systems Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology can be used to create robust processes.Robust process is one which is insensitive to noise in the inputs and process and deliver consistent results.This is one of the best ways of integrating six sigma with the quality management systems.

Six Sigma tools can be integrated into quality management procedures.For example, when writing a process for developing new product, service or software, six sigma tools such as QFD, Pugh’s concept selection matrix etc. can be specified at appropriate steps.This will make six sigma a way of working in the company and is the most effective way of implementing six sigma.

The following sections highlight the integration of six sigma with some of the popular quality management systems.

• Next Entry: Integrating Six Sigma with ISO-9000, TS-16949, COPC and CMM – Part 2