A Journey to...



Document: ISO/TC 176/SC 2/N 936

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12 July 2010

In search of “Sustained Success”……..

The journey towards Organizational Excellence starts with the first step………… but the “final destination” will never be reached!

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Why take steps towards sustained success?

3. Why is an organization’s management system a key element for sustained success?

4. Where is your organization on the path towards sustained success?

5. Lessons to be learned – to help your organization plan its next steps

6. The ISO 9000 family of standards - a powerful source of good business practices and knowledge, to help you on your “journey”

6.1 If you are just starting out………….you are at the initial awareness level

6.2 If you know where you’re going, but not sure how to get there……. you are aware of what needs to be done, and the performance levels you want to achieve

6.3 If you are close to reaching your destination………. you are close to achieving “sustained success”.

7. Conclusions

8. Related documents

1. Introduction

This document is intended for an organization’s management and its purpose is to provide information and guidance on the use of improvement methodologies, based on the ISO 9001:2008 requirements standard and the ISO 9004:2009 guidelines. This will help organizations to make their journey towards the ultimate goal of “sustained success” – achieving and maintaining their long-term objectives.

This initial framework will be supplemented with additional materials and further web links that may help readers understand and obtain the benefits from adopting holistic management approaches to using these proven methodologies.

2. Why take steps towards sustained success?

For all organizations, the approaches by which success is achieved are changing.

Whether you participate in the future of a public or private business, whether it is large or small, your continual success typically necessitates that you:-

▪ Enhance your current approaches by seeking new methods.

▪ Improve your organization’s performance.

3. Why is an organization’s management system a key element for sustained success?

A management system is a key element for leading an organization towards excellence; a good management system embraces more than simply establishing processes, improvement initiatives and projects, or documented procedures. A progressive management system:-

• Is based on good management principles;

• Supports the implementation of progressive business strategies;

• Is implemented to achieve defined strategic goals for the organization;

• Is based on a holistic, systematic approach;

• Integrates business-wide, coordinated initiatives;

• Addresses core issues such as innovation, customer value and global competitiveness, and

• Provides business tools, resources and communication links to drive the organization

A successful management system drives the development of an organization towards sustained success, in order to be one the best performing, efficient, and profitable organizations in its business sector.

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Figure 1 – Example of a management system

The organization’s strategy implementation should be driven by specific measurable strategic programmes to support the organization’s Strategic Initiatives, such as the examples given in table 1:

Table 1 – Example of Strategic programmes

|Strategic Programmes |Strategic initiatives |

|Innovation |Innovation, as a tool to shape the future |

| |Product platform strategies |

| |Innovation as a tool for anticipating technological trends and changes |

| |Innovation as a tool for surpassing customer expectations |

|Customer focus |To support customers with the aim of keeping them competitive |

| |To win new customers and market share |

| |To implement cross-selling initiatives |

| |To provide world class products and services |

|Global Competitiveness |Organization value enhancement, to open up new opportunities |

| |People empowerment, to achieve world-class performance |

| |Corporate responsibility, to deal with society and other interested parties |

| |Results oriented management |

| |Worldwide manufacturing and shared services for cost effectiveness |

In order to ensure success in achieving its strategies, objectives and goals, the organization’s management system should have a set of business tools to support and implement them at each stage.

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Figure 2 – Examples of tools for Strategies, objectives and goals

4. Where is your organization on the path to sustained success?

Knowing where your organization is on its road towards sustained success may help guide its next steps towards performance excellence.

Any organization should assess where it is positioned and determine its maturity levels for sustained success, identify improvement and innovation opportunities, set priorities for improvements, and establish action plans.

The results of an organization’s assessments can be a valuable input into its management review process; consequently such assessments should be conducted periodically.

The degree, or level, of the maturity of an organization describes its position on a scale that has immature, inconsistent business activities at the lower end, and mature consistent business activities at the higher end.

An organization’s maturity will be determined by its performance in relation to its vision, mission and strategy, systems, organizational structures and tools used, and relations with interested parties.

A mature organization is one that performs effectively and efficiently, and achieves sustained success. This maturity level will be based on its ability to:-

▪ Understand the needs and expectations of interested parties and changes in its business environment,

▪ Create its policies and strategies,

▪ Set and deploy relevant objectives,

▪ Manage its processes and resources,

▪ Demonstrate confidence in its people; leading to increased motivation, commitment and involvement

▪ Encourage openness towards suppliers and partners, while aiming for mutual benefits and increased value for all parties.

Best practices and excellence models typically use five maturity levels; the organization’s management should evolve its own maturity model and review its performance against each of them, identify its current maturity level, and review the criteria given for the higher levels.

The results analysis of this evaluation exercise can assist the organization’s management to understand and determine the improvements to be performed, in order to reach the next, higher, level of maturity.

As the organization achieves each level of maturity it can gain a greater understanding of what is needed to improve its performance and its management system.

The two most common assessment techniques utilized by organizations are:

• Benchmarking: Benchmarking is a measurement and analysis methodology, which a business can use to determine the best practices inside and outside the organization, with the aim of improving its own performance. Benchmarking can be applied to strategy and policies, operations, processes, products and organizational structures.

• Self-assessment: Self-assessment is a methodology for discovering the potential of an organization. It is a comprehensive and systematic review of its business activities and its performance in relation to its degree of maturity. Self-assessment can be used to determine the relative strengths and weaknesses of the organization in terms of its performance as well as its practices both at an overall level and at the level of its individual processes, with the objective of being able to prioritize, plan and implement improvements. Self assessment is usually carried out by a team of people representing cross functional as well as hierarchal interests within the organization.

• Auditing: …..

ISO 9004:2009, in Annex A, provides two excellent tools for an organization to self-assess its level of maturity and identify opportunities for improvement and innovation.

1. Top Management self-assessment tool: This self-assessment should be performed by the Top management of an organization to obtain a quick overview of its position in relation to its strategy. It uses different scenarios to relate the key elements of the organization’s performance to corresponding maturity levels for sustained success. Table 2 below gives a summarized version of Table A.1 from ISO 9004.

Table 2 – Example of a Top management self-assessment tool

|Typical key elements to be assessed |Maturity Level |

| |Level 1 (starting) |

| |Level 1 (starting) |Level 2 (aware) |

|High nonconformity costs and insufficient |Consistent use of product and process quality |Increased economic value |

|focus on customer benefit, impact negatively on|as levers to increase earned value | |

|business results | | |

|Frequent “fire fighting” replaces systematic |Introduction of a continual improvement system |Effective improvement actions or projects |

|and preventive action |under the responsibility of Top management | |

|Ambitious objectives and elaborate analyses are|Implement a methodology to convert objectives |Consistency and |

|not followed by actions |into process specific actions and to carry out |measurability |

| |improvement projects systematically | |

6. The ISO 9000 family - a powerful source of good business practices and knowledge, to help you on your “journey”

6.1. If you are just starting out………….

ISO 9001:2008 has assisted many organizations in moving from the starting to the successful positions and beyond by helping to demonstrate their capabilities in a widely accepted framework. This standard can particularly help enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of management systems, including processes for continual improvement and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements.

ISO 9004:2009 is a useful guide for a business that wishes to improve on the foundations of ISO 9001:2008. The practices described in this guide may add value by making your quality management system increasingly effective and efficient and to extend the depth of implementation and benefits obtained by all parties that are interested in or affected by the business operations. In this guide the objectives of customer satisfaction and product quality are extended to include the satisfaction of all interested parties and the performance level of the business.

It is amazing to discover how many managers would undertake changes without understanding their unit’s critical processes and their performance gaps. ISO 9001:2008 helps on that issue.

Some organizations used to have difficulty with improvement; they tried for it, but without a clear definition of what were important processes. By using ISO 9001:2008 an organization can determine its processes, obtain a clear understanding of what is important and educate its employees. This can result in a significant improvement in operating effectiveness.

Additionally, ISO 9004:2009 provides a non-prescriptive framework that can guide an organization on the route to sustained success. It can be useful in the starting or awareness phases to assess the organization’s maturity status and to provide guiding visions for the next steps on the route to sustained success. It also provides a way to compare with and learn from others.

The organization’s planning processes should anticipate many factors, such as customer expectations, new business ideas, partnering opportunities, employee development and hiring needs. ISO 9004:2009 helps to integrate all these and other diverse inputs.

6.2 If you know where you’re going, but not sure how to get there………

The foundations provided by ISO 9001:2008 continue to be important but as organizations progress past the “starting” and “initially aware” levels, there is a need to adopt more sophisticated management practices to accommodate and drive growth.

During this phase of growth, organizations often face the risk of misalignment of effort. Symptoms may include the use of isolated initiatives that do not achieve their full potential.

ISO 9004:2009 can help build management systems that do not just provide customer confidence but also help improve and align the management practices of an organization to fulfil its strategy.

You need to keep an eye on the market place, which can be difficult. ISO 9004:2009 can help you to look beyond the requirements of your immediate customers and gain deeper insights of your market place.

ISO 9004:2009 guides you to establish monitoring and measurement process to determine whether your approaches are well defined and deployed, and if desired outcomes are being effectively and efficiently achieved.

Sometimes organizations start new initiatives without thinking about how they might truly add value to what they are already doing. ISO 9004:2009 guides you to define what you really need, and then track what your organization is really achieving, as you progress through the maturity stages towards sustained success.

While your organization grows, you will find it necessary to increase/improve the quality of your management practices. Using ISO 9004:2009 can help you to educate and develop your managers and employees, to understand what is really required.

6.3. If you are close to reaching your destination……….

Your organization is probably ready to enhance its internal learning by increasingly using external comparisons and analyses of its performance. Using Performance Excellence models can be of benefit at all phases of the journey but particularly at this higher level where they will help to bring an external perspective to an organization’s analysis and planning of improvement.

The use of ISO 9001:2008 should continue to remain important for providing confidence that your organization’s achievements are real and repeatable, but an increasing rate of product innovations will expand your business and profits. The use of ISO 9004:2009 should give a clear view of the processes that drive innovation.

Strategy and execution are strongly interdependent and both are increasingly important as the organization grows. Since your organization will probably by now have demonstrated its conformity to ISO 9001:2008 (by certification or other means), this should provide confidence that you can consistently meet customer requirements. However, it may not give the deeper performance insights that could be obtained through the use of ISO 9004:2009.

7. Conclusion

The use of ISO9004:2009 (whether combined with ISO 9001:2008, or not) can provide a framework for guidance in strategic orientation, assessment and measurement methodologies to help your organization on its journey to sustained success. Once you achieve sustained success, the continued use of a management system based on these standards will help keep your organization successful.

8. Related Documents

▪ ISO 9004:2009 Managing for the sustained success of an organization – A quality management approach

▪ ISO 9001:2008 Quality management systems – Requirements

▪ ISO 9000:2005 Quality management systems – Fundamentals and vocabulary

▪ Implementation guidance for ISO 9004:2009[pic]

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