MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITY

Management responsibility

Management responsibility

1. Introduction

Eat Holdings Plc is primarily seeking to become ISO 9000 certified because of the internal improvements and strategic benefits associated with this particular quality tool. The internal improvements include requiring that all business activities related to their health services be conducted in a three-part continuous cycle of planning, control, and documentation. The strategic benefits include gaining access to a vast number of educated customers who are seeking to avail of the services of an internationally certified health service provider. The dilemma rests with the management who wish to maintain high quality levels but still want to keep their costs low.

The earlier ISO 9000 standards adopted by the company ensure that everyone within the organisation understands the importance of quality and of implementing documented processes. As a reminder, let us now go through a few of the main concepts related to the ISO standards.

 

2. Definition of Quality

The International Organisation for Standardization defines quality as the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. Specifically, quality is achieved when the nature of the service meets the need. The nature of the service with regard to the product or service provided also includes information and customer contact. Needs refer not only to the customer's desires and expectations but the aspirations and obligations of society (environmental protection and safety) and those of the service provider himself (costs and deadlines). In our case, the customer or patient that comes to us for treatment has the need to recover from their illness, expects a clean and pleasing environment in which to consult us and a qualified doctor to prescribe treatment. Company EAT HOLDINGS PLC of course wants to do all this as cost effectively as possible within a given time frame so as to best utilize all its resources.

 

3. ISO 9000 family - key concepts

A large number of books and papers exist on the topic of ISO 9000 and its related programs. For example, Clements and Zuckerman have written books that provide step-by-step guidance on how to standardize procedures and how to ensure that those procedures are being followed.

 

3.1        Eight Management Principles

The entire quality management focus is tightly based on eight management principles that are to be employed by management in their quest to direct their firm towards improved performance. These principles are generic, similar to the quality system itself, and hence can be used in context of any organisation, of any size, in any given industry. The principles are:

3.1.1.      Customer focus

3.1.2.      Leadership  

3.1.3.      Involvement of people

3.1.4.      Process approach

3.1.5.      Systems approach to management

3.1.6.      Continual improvement

3.1.7.      Factual approach to decision making

3.1.8.      Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

 

3.2       ISO 9000 Family - Standards Outlines

To understand what the ISO 9000 standards family is all about, we need to firstly define what each outlines:

 

3.2.1        ISO 9000: 2000 outlines the essentials and terminology. This simply means that it lays down the basics and ...