Implementation of Web-based Quality Management Systems
B. Brown, Knight Piésold Consulting
R. Bergstrom, Knight Piésold Quality Data Systems Ltd.
Abstract
The implementation of a Quality Management System (QMS) or an
Environmental Management System (EMS) that conforms to the standards
issued by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) no longer
needs to result in a bureaucratic nightmare supported by mounds of paperwork.
Careful planning to ensure these systems closely match existing business
processes and using the appropriate technologies to facilitate the access to
information make it easier to achieve increased efficiencies for the operation of
the enterprise and to get acceptance of the system by the end-users.
Most organisations have the required processes and procedures to
produce a product that meets their customer’s requirements or to minimise the
harmful effects on the environment caused by their activities. The purpose of the
ISO standards and a properly implemented QMS or EMS is to enable
organisations to demonstrate that their employees are trained in the appropriate
processes and procedures and that these processes and procedures are being
followed and improved upon. A well designed, user-friendly QMS or EMS that is
based on existing practices minimises the impact of the changes on the
operation of the business and has a much greater chance of success.
Knight Piésold Ltd., the Vancouver office of Knight Piésold Consulting,
was faced with a number of challenges when it embarked on its ISO 9001
certification project. It needed a QMS that conformed to the ISO standards and
accommodated a business having a global client base with employees working in
different locations. Having expertise spread throughout a number of affiliated
offices worldwide along with a requirement to access and consolidate project
information from all these locations, the best solution was to implement a
“paperless” web-based system.
This paper describes the Quality Management System that was
implemented and demonstrates how the technologies that were developed can
be used to satisfy other similar requirements.
Implementation of Web-based Quality Management Systems
B. Brown, Knight Piésold Consulting
R. Bergstrom, Knight Piésold Quality Data Systems Ltd.
Introduction
Quality Management Systems are increasingly proving their value in the
operation of today’s businesses. The main goals of formalising the quality
process are to increase the quality and reliability of products and services
produced and to provide customers with the assurance that the companies they
are dealing are using the appropriate methods and procedures. Although the
initial focus of quality system implementations was the manufacturing sector, the
success achieved by that business sector has resulted in the adoption of the
process by other business areas.
The process of arriving at the appropriate Quality Management System
includes:
identification of the goals to be achieved and expectations of
stakeholders
an analysis of the current business practices and gaps in the
existing quality management system,
the determination of the form of the desired final solution,
an analysis of the systems and technologies available to assist in
the development of the final solution,
the selection of the appropriate systems and technologies,
the development of the solution,
the implementation of the system into the standard business operating
procedures, and
an analysis and review of the results.
Identification of Goals
Besides the standard goals of increased efficiency, profitability, customer
satisfaction, increased market share, reduced cost and reduced liability that
companies seek to achieve through deployment of a quality management
system, Knight Piésold had the added goal to implement a solution that made it
easier for its employees to perform their work. The incorporation of the majority
of existing business practices, combined with the automation of appropriate
procedures and common access to relevant information were identified as the
prime areas to address in order to achieve these goals.
Analysis
Although the initial focus of the ISO 9000 standardisation process was the
manufacturing industry, the principles of quality control that form the basis for the
standards can be equally applied to other business sectors. This fact was
recognised by the ISO and played a role in the revision of the 1994 versions of
the ISO 9000 family and the adoption of the ISO 9000:2000 standards. Some of
the underlying principles that drove the revision included the need to connect
Quality Management Systems to organisational processes, to provide greater
orientation toward continual improvement and customer satisfaction, and to
provide compatibility with other management systems, such as the ISO 14000
Environmental Management System.
As an engineering consulting firm, Knight Piésold Ltd. fits into the service
sector and follows a normal project oriented business process, shown in Figure
1, with a pre-contract phase, followed by a planning phase and ending with the
project execution. The pre-contract phase consists of processes focused on
securing new business including issuing Statements of Qualifications in order to
secure placement on the approved bidders’ list and responses to competitive
Requests for Proposals. The planning phase consists primarily of setting the
budgets, determining the schedules and allocating the appropriate resources and
the execution phase consists of the preparation of the detailed engineering
documents and drawings.
Figure 1
The incorporation of a Quality Management System into this type of
organisation is heavily weighted towards two areas of the business. The first
area consists of controlling documents, data and information that is either used
as the input to the engineering work being performed or generated during the
project execution. The second area consists of formalising the various review
processes that are needed to ensure the quality of the work at all stages of the
business operation. Enveloping all of this is the process of identifying and
resolving issues and nonconformances and the resulting continual improvement
process.
Figure 2
Proposed Solution
The fundamental criterion for the proposed quality management system
was, in fact, that the system was not perceived by the stakeholders to be a
quality management system. It was to become the business management
system that governed all work done by the employees and the company. Its
design was to ensure that the methods and procedures to be followed during the
normal course of work met the standards for ISO 9001 certification and that an
audit trail was automatically produced that provided the necessary details to
satisfy the requirements for verification that the work was done correctly.
In order to meet this requirement it became obvious that the system
needed to be “paperless” in its implementation. Any forms needed to verify
compliance with the quality procedures must be automatically produced by the
system during the normal course of work and all information needed to produce
the forms must be stored electronically and accessible through the system. All
documents needed to describe the methods and procedures including the Quality
Manuals, standard operating procedures and work instructions must also be
available electronically.
Technology Selection
A web-based system was the obvious choice for an operation with
affiliated offices worldwide and employees that could be working anywhere in the
world. The ability to access the system over the Internet from remote offices,
worksites, hotel rooms, airports or even Internet café’s provided employees with
use of the system under most circumstances. The additional need to either
minimise or eliminate the use of dedicated software on the end-users machines
also pointed to a web-based solution with a standard browser as the user
interface (UI).
This architecture is one form of ‘Thin Client Computing’, where the
application is installed and resides on a central server or group of servers with all
of the application processing performed centrally. The client’s machine does not
perform any application processing and all screen, keyboard and mouse
information is passed to and from the users via the Internet browser.
Enhancements and changes to the application are applied on the server and are
immediately available to all clients. In the same way, software version upgrades
are only performed at the host location and do not need to be performed on each
client machine. There is also a much greater ability to support different
computers as browsers typically work on multiple generations of hardware.
Remote
Client
Local
Client
Internet
Internet
Database Application Remote
Layer Layer Client
Remote
Client
Figure 3
Once the overall architecture was defined as a host based application and
remote access via an Internet browser, the next step was the determination of
the application software. The options included:
purchasing an off-the-shelf software package, using it as it is and,
where necessary, adapting the business methods and procedures to fit
the software,
modifying an existing off-the shelf package to better reflect the
company’s business methodology and only changing the methods and
procedures where modifications couldn’t be made,
or developing a customised solution that matched the company’s
business requirements.
An analysis of available off-the-shelf ISO 9000 software did not reveal any
suitable packages for a project-oriented business. Most of the available software
was geared towards manufacturing industries and most focused heavily on the
documentation requirements of the ISO 9000 standards. None appeared to be
applicable for use as is. The limited value of modifying one of these packages to
accommodate some of the requirements and the potential difficulties in
implementing a modified system led to the decision to develop an in-house
customised solution.
Once it was determined that the in-house development of a customised
solution was the best approach, an investigation of commercially available
development software was performed. Some of the main requirements for the
platform included suitability to the desired architecture, robustness of the final
product and ease of programming. The selected software, ColdFusion,
combines an easy-to-learn script-based programming language with a web
application server to provide applications that integrate browser, server and
database technologies. The deployment platform supports both single server
and multi-server clusters to serve high volume, transaction intensive applications.
Connectivity is offered to most commercial databases including MS SQL Server,
which was being used to support other company applications.
System Development
The primary goal of implementing a Quality Management System is to
ensure that the business practices and procedures that are used on a daily basis
by all employees result in providing customers with the quality service they
expect from an engineering firm. Recognising this, the development of the
system paralleled the work that Knight Piésold Ltd. was doing to achieve their
ISO 9001 certification. The analysis of the existing business procedures for ISO
9001 certification identified the need to have specific processes in place. These
processes, in turn, became the basis for the design requirements for the on-line
Quality Management System. With the main focus on the business processes of
the organisation, the development of the online system was tailored to meet each
individual business requirement that was identified.
The flexibility provided by the selected technologies allowed for the rapid
creation of individual modules for each step in the overall process. Each module
is designed to capture of all relevant information with the minimum amount of
effort on behalf of the users and all the information is stored in the database.
The modules are sequentially linked to step the users through each phase of the
process and the captured data provides a complete audit trail of the events and
information.
Concurrent with the development of the on-line Quality procedures, was
the development of the supporting on-line documentation. This included the
Quality manual, all the Standard Operating Procedures and training documents
necessary to achieve certification to the ISO 9001 standards as well as the
individual work instructions and standard templates for the production of
proposals, reports and engineering documents. Again, the emphasis here was
to implement a complete office system that incorporated all the necessary
procedures and information to conduct the daily routine of business, not just a
separate stand-alone Quality Management System that conformed to the ISO
standards.
Implementation
The implementation of the Quality System was staged over the entire
development period. As soon as the individual modules for a particular process
were completed they were implemented in the test system. Short training
sessions on each process were held for the end-users, who were then able to
test out the system with data from real projects. Feedback from the end-users
was used to fine-tune the system prior to its full release.
This staged approach provided two distinct benefits to the overall
implementation. The first benefit was to the end-user in that they were gradually
introduced to the new system and the training and familiarisation took place over
an extended period of time. The second benefit was to the developers who
were able to get good feedback from end-users during the development process.
They were then able to make the necessary changes to ensure that the system
accommodated the end-user requirements as closely as possible.
As a follow-up to the initial implementation, the system undergoes
continual reviews to identify new processes that need to be incorporated in order
to increase the value of the system and the quality of the work. It also serves to
identify existing processes that add little or no value and can be removed. This
continual improvement, which constitutes a major element of the ISO 9000
standard, has resulted in the evolvement of the system through three versions of
release.
Benefits / Results
The use of the described on-line Quality Management System within
Knight Piésold Ltd. as the basis to achieve certification to the ISO 9001
standards greatly reduced some of the usual problems associated with taking a
company through this process. Building on the existing business processes and
incorporating a paperless system made it was much easier to get acceptance
from the end-users. The main benefits to the users included eliminating some of
the existing paper-based overhead associated with doing their work, providing
access to standard electronic forms and documentation, and giving them a better
overall view of the work that is being done on projects.
A side benefit to the in-house development of a system specifically
designed to meet the requirements of a project oriented engineering firm, is that
the system can also be used by similar organisations to help run and manage
their day-to-day business operations, regardless of whether they are seeking ISO
certification. Other offices within the Knight Piésold Consulting group are now
using it in this manner and they may decide at a later date to take full advantage
of the benefits of the system to help them achieve their own certification.
Conclusion
Technologies are now available to enable the development and
implementation of cost-effective on-line systems that assist in managing the day-
to-day operation of all business functions. The use of these systems, if
implemented properly, can greatly reduce the overhead, effort and resulting
paperwork needed to guarantee the quality of work.
The previously daunting task of implementing a paper-based Quality
System to the ISO 9000 standards, with the resulting reams of associated
documents, can now be replaced with on-line systems. These on-line systems
reduce the amount of paperwork and, more importantly, they reduce the amount
of effort and duplication of work that typically results from paper-based systems.
In the final analysis, a well-designed system should be viewed by the end-users
as a useful tool that assists them in performing their work and not as a
cumbersome add-on that increases their workload.
