QualityMaster

5 Ways QMS Software will Transform your Food Manufacturing in 2024

Charulata Soral on January 4, 2024

Food QMS software trends in 2023

We are all aware that the food industry works with perishable products that directly impact the health and lives of ones consuming them. People may become unwell or become vulnerable to contamination if there is even the slightest lapse in the product’s quality. Thus, manufacturers must uphold quality standards and fulfil quality requirements before sending the products to market.

The narrative doesn’t finish here; this industry faces numerous other difficulties and obstacles, but it strives to overcome them in order to prosper. And their partner in this journey is food quality control software. Continue reading the blog to know more about it –

Overview:

Food production is one of the oldest, largest, fastest growing, but most complex manufacturing industry in the world. They operate on thin margins, deal with “increasingly aware” consumers, and issues such as labor complexities, complex supply chains, perishable inventory, and stringent regulatory & food safety requirements etc. These stringent regulatory requirements make it one of the most tightly regulated and controlled industries, and rightly so, as there have been a number of foodborne diseases reported in recent times, and the risk of contamination due to long, complex supply chains, has always been there.

In response to these challenges, FDA and other regulators seek for higher transparency in the food supply chain, and thus push manufacturers towards adhering to stringent industry regulations. This has made them look for solutions that can help them meet the industry-specific regulatory requirements, as well as maintain the food safety & quality standards.

And what can help them in this? Food Quality Control Software.

Food manufacturers have realized that QMS for food can help in combating the challenges related to managing critical quality operations, meeting compliance as well as standards, following ISO guidelines, and in turn, decreasing wastage and losses.

Benefits of using Quality Management System in food industry

A QMS offers document control, change control, training control, audits, CAPA, customer complaints, &
support for other quality processes.

Benefits of Food QMS system

5 ways QMS Software will transform your Food Manufacturing In 2024

Food manufacturers continue to put their trust on software for food quality control. And an efficient food quality management software can help them maintain food safety and quality. Knowing the fact that this software has tremendous potential to solve many problems faced by the industry, let’s know how it will transform the food manufacturing in a bigger frame:

5 ways QMS system will trasform the food manufacturing

Following compliances and regulation

Food industry is all about adhering to international standards as well as national laws, rules, and regulations. Doing it manually is an extremely time-consuming affair and often leads to errors and inaccuracy. However, a   QMS in food industry helps in staying in line with regulations and customs.

A food quality control software can prevent this mistake, ensure that the final product complies with all regulations which keeps businesses stay away from legal obligations and heavy penalties.

Preserving food safety and quality

Today’s consumers are increasingly concerned about the quality of the food they eat. They are keen on finding out about the complete supply chain for consumables, from farm to table.

Quality, food safety, and traceability all play a big part in this situation. A quality control software can enable producers to track each inventory item along the supply chain, perform quality checks at every stage, and ensure that there is constant, unobstructed visibility both forward and backward.

Syncing with the Go-green mission

By following the HACCP guidelines, it ensures maximum productivity by eliminating spoilage, reducing scraps and food wastages. In this way, our environment is also less polluted, and food producers can help contribute to being more environmentally sustainable and green.

Every quality process in the food business is automated and streamlined by a QMS, and as a result, the entire process becomes digital, eliminating the need for paperwork and an enormous number of files and folder actions. Only those with authenticated rights can access the central platform where the papers can be stored, modified, and secured.

Determining the issues & fixing them permanently

If non-conformances (deviations caused from the set standards) are not identified and handled on time, they can create chaos and havoc. For example: The mentioned ingredients of the food product don’t match the actual product.

A QMS in food industry, however, helps in determining issues like these and records them so that they could be fixed and ensures that the same issue never happens in future.

Improvement in supplier/vendor relationships

A QMS solution in food industry helps food manufacturers in evaluating & managing all aspects of suppliers that can have a direct impact on the product quality and also on, brand reputation. It brings every single detail of suppliers in a centralized manner and keeps all the departments on same page. It also helps in supplier verification and background checks.

How Can the Food Industry Benefit from QualityMaster software for food quality control?

QualityMaster – One of the best next-gen QMS tools for food industry that enables the food manufacturing organizations to achieve the highest-possible levels of quality, while maintaining the production efficiency as well as profitability.

Furthermore, it makes it simpler for the producers to comply with the regulatory standards by providing end-to-end visibility and traceability.

QualityMaster software for total quality management in the food industry is a closed-loop quality system and has a variety of standard and unique features that enable food operators to manage all product quality, safety, and compliance issues throughout the production processes and into the supply chain.

Modules Included:

  • Non-conformance -Captures, manages, reports, and tracks, non-conformances from internal/external sources, and performs root cause analysis.
  • CAPA -Identifies quality-related issues, executes containment actions, mitigates recurrence, and verifies the effectiveness of root cause elimination.
  • Complaint Management –Manages and tracks quality-related customer complaints from investigation to resolution.
  • Training Management –Automates the paper-based training processes and tracks all the training records.
  • Change Management -Establishes a proper workflow for documenting changes and automates entire change control process.
  • Document Management –Stores, creates, tracks, retrieves, and manages organizational documents through the value chain.
  • Compliance Management – Automated alerts for potential issues and handle regulatory compliance with ease.
  • Risk Management –Assesses future risks and their impact and drive continuous process improvement through risk control and mitigation.
  • Audit Management –Automates and streamlines the entire audit process to plan, schedule, and conduct audits.

Click here to know how QualityMaster can help your food manufacturing business!

Upsides of QualityMaster’s Food Quality Management System

QualityMaster is the preferred option for operators in the food manufacturing industry due to the following advantages to businesses:

Advantages of food QMS software

To sum up:

QualityMaster comes with a strong Quality Control functionality and has been serving the needs of food manufacturing businesses successfully for over 30 years now. With this software for quality management in food industry, the food manufacturers can maintain the safety & quality of the products and meet the industry-specific regulatory requirements with élan.

To know more about its benefits to your food manufacturing business, connect with us.

Essential Elements of Food Quality Management System

Charulata Soral on January 30, 2023

Food Quality Management System

The globalization has made the manufacturing market more competitive, by offering new opportunities to businesses old and new. This should not be considered as a threat to the survival of existing manufacturers; in fact, it is a challenge that they should take up. Because this challenge, actually poses an opportunity to gain customer loyalty through the enhanced products and improved services offered in the quest to stand up to the challenge.

By enhanced products we mean ones—that suitably cater to the specific needs and concerns of the customers. Also, when it comes to competitiveness, one obvious question that arises is- “With the rising competition bar, what makes the top manufacturers stand out from the league?”

The answer to this question is “quality of their own products & services”. By maximizing suitability and quality of their products for the consumer usage, manufacturers succeed in excelling in their field— and thus in building a sustainable brand image.

Therefore, to become a successful manufacturer, robust quality control, is of utmost importance. For which, manufacturers need to opt a feature-rich food quality management software. But if you are a tenderfoot, then before implementing a food quality software, knowing the concept of quality and food quality management system is essential.

This blog takes you to a knowledge-intended journey of exploring the term “quality” and the essential elements of a Food QMS.

The Quality Concept-

“Quality is a comprehensive term that includes two meanings: product characteristics that lead to customer satisfaction and the absence of failures. Still, this does not defines “Quality” as a whole. The customer needs are not only related to these two intrinsic characteristics of the product, but also to its availability in the market, it’s appropriate pricing and suitable packaging. These specifications altogether ensure that the customer will buy a safe product standing at par with what is mentioned on the label, without having any health threats.

For these objectives to be achieved, it is necessary to have an efficient food quality management system in place that ensures operational excellence at each level of the organization. Talking of an ideal food quality management software, it must have the following capabilities.

Essential elements of food QMS software

Quality Control- To ensure safety and quality of the food for consumers, adhering to quality requirements becomes a mandate for the food manufacturers. With the absence of quality control procedures, the contaminated foods can easily make way to the markets. In avoiding such situations, the Quality Control module of a Food Quality Software plays a key role. Because it allows manufacturers to create and apply quality tests on the products, at all important junctures of the food supply chain-, that too with set target values.

This ensures quality throughout the product lifecycle: i.e., when materials enter the facility, when they are put ahead for production, and when they are being shipped to the customers. Also, based on the test results of pass/fail, manufacturers get the convenience of accepting and rejecting products accordingly.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) – Food manufacturing refers to the process of turning fresh ingredients into consumable food products. This includes the process of high-volume mixing of multiple ingredients that too in a set order, to manufacture finished goods. These finished goods must have uniform consistency. Even a small deviation in the procedure, could lead to fluctuations in the product quality of the finished goods.

Therefore, documenting processes in the form of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) helps organizations ensure error-free and consistent processes throughout the supply chain. This is the reason why “Advanced SOP feature turns out to be one of the prominent features that should not be given away with.

Non-Conformance (NC) & Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA)- Non-conformance reports that there is something wrong with the process or product due to which the outcome fails to match the required product specifications. In situations like this, the NC/CAPA functionality of an efficient QMS software comes to the rescue. It helps in successfully dealing with every type of non-conformity that could occur such as:

  • Product non-conformity- Which relates to product issues identified during quality management or by customer complaints.
  • Process non-conformity- Which relates to downtime, machine problems, operational inconsistency, etc.
  • System non-conformity- Which is identified by internal audit system
  • Material non-conformity- Which occurs due to expired materials, ingredients

The NC functionality finds the root cause of the occurred non-conformity, wile the CAPA suggests  the required corrective needed to be applied, and prevents its recurrence, comes out as an un-negotiable part of the food QMS software.

Compliance Management- Throughout the supply chain, adherence to set safety laws imposed by the regulatory bodies ensures that the food item is not unsafe, misbranded, or low-graded for the human consumption.

For that reason, this feature of a food quality software is of paramount importance, that helps manufacturers meet local, regional, national, and international regulatory requirements such as Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), etc.

Document Management- This capability is essential to control the pile of documents a food business needs to manage for several reasons. This includes formula/recipe details, SOPs, compliance policies, training manuals, recall procedures, labels, etc. These crucial records must be accessible when required, and hence needs to be systematically managed.

But manual management of these documents could lead to maximized manpower requirement & minimized productivity. That’s the reason the document management feature can’t be ignored in the list of essential elements of a food Quality Management system. It automates the task of creating, storing, managing, and retrieving the documents when required— and becomes a significant contributor in enhancing the organizational productivity.

Risk Management- It is the act of setting up prevention strategies to avert potential issues from occurring. Actually, the risk management feature efficiently identifies the potential areas that are vulnerable to business helping organizations carry out necessary actions in response. Though there could be numerous areas of risks in a food manufacturing business, but, the prominent ones out of all are:

  • Supply chain risks- Threats from the quality of materials arriving at the facility
  • Cyber risks- Data corruption, data loss, data manipulation  
  • Natural Hazards- Equipment failure, earthquake, Fire outbreak, etc.

A risk management system can help you manage, track and mitigate these risks and that’s the reason why a proper risk management approach is a must-have feature for a robust food quality software and should not be overlooked by the manufacturers.

Final Thoughts-

Food manufacturing involves processing of highly sensitive and perishable items, which makes it more challenging for the manufacturers of that industry to sustain. Hence, right from the purchasing of raw materials to delivery of finished goods, everything needs to be not just streamlined and organized, but inspected too.

For this, other than a good QMS software like Quality Master, no other strategy would deliver better results. If you are also looking to inject a culture of quality into your business, then get in touch with our team of experts today.

What is Quality Risk Management Software?

Charulata Soral on September 27, 2022

What is risk management system

Managing a business involves a variety of risks, including natural calamities- something that’s completely out of your control. These risks have an enormous potential to make your business face downfall or distress. Even the tiniest risk has the capability to put your entire business process at stake.

And, what’s more? They can be expensive and time-consuming to fix. Regardless of company size, CEOs, VPs, or risk management officers should foresee the risks and have a plan to curtail these risks and address them before they hamper their business.

In this blog, we’ll define risk management, go through all the key points, and explain how our quality risk management software can help you manage risks. With all this info, you’ll be able to plan your risk management strategy and needs better.

Contents:

  • Overview
  • What is risk management?
  • Risk management principles
  • Risk management process
  • Why is risk management crucial for your company?
  • QualityMaster: Tackles your risk to let you focus on your business processes
  • Summing Up

Overview

Ideally, I would say it is impossible to eliminate all the risks but, it is possible to think about all the potential risk factors that your business could experience and stay prepared to handle them. And this is doable with automated risk management software. An effective risk management software focuses on the connection between risks and their significant harmful impacts that can stop organizations from fulfilling their strategic goals.

Let us first know what risk management is and what its causes are –

What is risk management?

The process of identifying, assessing, and controlling threats to an organization’s assets and earnings is known as risk management.

Risks originate from a range of sources and can be both internal and external. Internal risks can be caused due to your employees, vendors, leadership decisions, etc. whereas external risks can be caused by a number of things such as financial uncertainty, legal responsibilities, technological problems, strategic management blunders, accidents, and natural calamities.

Talking about the situation that occurred say two years before,

When COVID-19 entered the market, businesses faced a significant threat to their operations. Prior to the pandemic, nobody ever imagined or was prepared to deal with the level of impact it had on practically everything, including businesses.  Numerous businesses collapsed, many people lost their jobs, and factories were shut down, all of which resulted in huge losses. Now that the COVID-19 effects are stabilized, CEOs and Directors of various companies are taking a fresh start to look at their risk management programs. They are reconsidering their risk exposure and examining risk-mechanism processes.

Companies are considering the competitive advantages of a proactive strategy and substituting it for their existing strategies, reducing the use of traditional techniques like guarding against past risks, changing risk management only after a risk has caused harm, etc. Business interest in achieving sustainability, resilience, and corporate agility has increased because of this.

Before moving further, it is now important to look at the principle of risk management.

Risk management principles

The International Council for Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) states that there are two main principles of quality risk management:

  • A better risk evaluation should be based on facts and research from scientific knowledge and should ultimately aim to protect customers.

A quality management procedure should be proportional to risk level- higher the level of risk, stronger the plan. The time required, and formal documentation requirements should all be in line with the degree of risk.

Risk management process

The five steps of ISO’s risk management approach are as follows:

Step: 1 Identify the risks:

List out all the risks that your company might experience while operating. Generally, this process is performed routinely. Start a risk assessment by looking at the elements in your business and surroundings that could be risky, such as regulatory, legal, environmental, market, and other hazards.

 You should be aware of potential threats to your company, such as technical hazards, single point of failure (SPOF) dangers, and natural calamities.

Step: 2 Analyze the risks

After identifying the risks, conduct a risk analysis. Some risks can bring your business to a standstill, while some will only be minor inconveniences. To analyze each threat and determine its potential disruption, ask: “How probable are these risks to occur?” And, if it occurs, then what are the consequences?

You can then establish a link between the risks and varied factors within your organization. This will help you comprehend how many business operations the risk influences. The risk increases as the number of functions increases.

Step 3: Evaluate and prioritize every risk

Rank and order each risk according to its intensity. This helps the risk management team to view and understand the complete risk exposure of your firm. For instance, threats that might only cause little inconvenience should be given less importance than those that could result in catastrophic losses.

Determine your risk appetite and tolerance by creating a risk profile. Some businesses feel confident taking a lot of chances, while others desire to take no risks at all.

Step: 4 Treat your risks

Create a risk management system to mitigate each risk. You and your team should start by addressing the risk with the highest priority in order to prevent it from jeopardizing your organization. Contacting the appropriate experts in each field where the risk exists is a clever way to begin.

Step: 5 Monitor your risks

Determine whether your risk mitigation activities are sufficient or whether you need to make any changes by routinely monitoring, tracking, and reviewing your performance. If the risk management approach put in place is not workable, your team will have to start again with a fresh procedure.

To solve issues, avoid acting on impulse and getting into “firefighting mode”. Instead, a cool, clear perspective will help you limit the damage caused by project hazards and seize opportunities.

Why is risk management crucial for your company?

If you are still not convinced, consider the repercussions of delaying the implementation of a competent risk control strategy until you know how things play out for your company’s bottom line. The picture below mentioned in your business that might make you think again about establishing a risk management system, if still not convinced-

  • Deficiency or Limited Growth

A risk management system can help and facilitate the expansion of your business. There is still a probability that some threats may develop despite your best efforts, no doubt. However, after identifying, evaluating, and controlling risk, your odds of success will increase, enabling more confident decision-making.

  • Lawsuits

Companies that break laws and regulations have the risk of being sued by the government, employees, customers, rival companies, or other parties. If you find yourself in one of these circumstances, your company may have to spend a lot of money on legal bills, settlement costs, or even both. However, adopting a risk management system can limit or even dilute chances of such situations.

  • Large Losses

Additionally, inefficient risk management has a big monetary impact. You stand to lose a lot if you do not have one. This could even include lower market share just because you weren’t able to anticipate changes in the market environment. You risk pecuniary loss if you don’t plan for the risks of growing your company. If you’re not prepared to manage issues, your company’s reputation could also be permanently harmed.

Discover the many advantages of integrating Risk Management Software into your company:

Speaking directly, if not adopting a quality risk management system brings about above-mentioned challenges, implementing one-

QualityMaster: Tackles your risk to let you focus on your business processes

QualityMaster gives you a thorough understanding of your business’s risk landscape. This covers all product lines, company divisions, processes, quality control, document management, and much more. You can easily identify and mitigate long-term system, process, and product risks with the help of this risk management software’s tracking and proactive management. It is an innovative tool that helps in mitigating and avoiding risks as well as stealth process flaws that are in line with their impact and likelihood of occurring.

This Risk Management System creates a secure and simple-to-understand platform with modern capabilities, allowing you to keep a rigorous eye on risk updates.

The list of features that follows clearly illustrates why QualityMaster Risk Management System is the top choice in the industry:

Features of risk management software

Summing Up:

The pandemic is a great example of a risk issue that emphasizes on taking a holistic, long-term strategic view and action on the various kinds of risks that could hurt you as a company. It’s time for businesses to think about controlling threats and utilizing them to their advantage in order to minimize any bad effects on the company.

QualityMaster enables you to evaluate risks and identify the broad effects of each risk more quickly by providing risk heat maps, dashboards, and reports. Schedule a demo to see how easy it is to know what risks to mitigate, how to mitigate them, track workflows, collect and store documents, and much more!

Importance of Total Quality Management in Production and Operations Management

Charulata Soral on April 1, 2022

importance of total quality management

Total Quality Management (TQM) is significant for all areas of a manufacturing business, including production and operations management. Whether it is about quality control in production management, or about any other functionality, TQM approach has proved its worth. Let’s find out how.

Overview

The manufacturing businesses around the globe pay great emphasis on quality. Or let us rephrase it a bit- excellent manufacturing businesses pay great emphasis on quality in business processes, all their operations, and basically pretty much in everything they do.

Such businesses, which include best of the best from different industrial sectors, allow a mere 3.4 defects per million parts in manufactured goods. In simple words, the best businesses allow just 3.4 mistakes per million activities in a service operation, making their processes 99.99966 percent perfect.

This is known as the six sigma approach to TQM. But this isn’t about the six sigma approach. This is about TQM, and its importance in production and operations management. So let’s get started with some important definitions first. Also Read: What is the difference between Quality Control and Quality Assurance?

First things first, what’s TQM?

Total Quality Management is a manufacturing philosophy which allows organizations to focus on improving the quality of their products or services at every level, the efficiency of their operations, and producing higher quality products with few defects.

With concepts such as customer satisfaction and continuous improvement at its core, TQM approach encourages all members of a manufacturing organization to participate in activities focused at continual improvement of the products, services, business processes, and the organizational culture, with the emphasis on delivering defect-free products/services to the customers.

This approach relies on the use of different tools such as strategy, data, and effective communication, so that its ultimate objective of doing things right the very first time, every time, so that the cost, time, and other resources required to correct poor work, and failed product/service implementations, can be saved, is achieved. Also Read: Benefits of a Functioning Nonconformance Management System

Production and operations management: An overview

Production management in a manufacturing organization is essentially about planning, scheduling, controlling, and executing all the activities related to the creation of products and services. These activities involve turning the inputs like raw materials and capital into outputs like products/services.

Managing this entire process of converting the inputs into final output is the role of operations management. Or in simpler words, operations management is all about managing production and delivery of products/services, and production management is a part of it.

At the core of both these approaches is customer satisfaction, which is an essential part of effective production and operations. Over the years, the manufacturing function has become more outwardly focused, as against the inwardly approach of the yesteryears. What it has done is that the focus on quality has now become a central component of effective production and operations management.

QMS software for production and operations

What’s Total Quality Management in production and operations management?

TQM helps all the customer-focused manufacturing organizations create an environment of continuous improvement through total involvement of all their internal resources, and consistently deliver high-quality output that delights customers.

All the organizations depend on their customers, who actually determine the level of quality, which is nothing but the fitness of a product or service for meeting or exceeding its intended use as required by them. As a matter of fact, quality begins with the design of a product in accordance with the customer specification.

With customers becoming more and more demanding in terms of expecting greater durability, reliability, and quality at the most economic price, manufacturers are forced to strictly follow quality procedures throughout, and provide a product or service at the most economical costs, thus ensuring full customer satisfaction. This can be achieved through TQM.

By applying the TQM approach, manufacturers get to understand their customers’ current and future needs, and work towards exceeding their expectations by continually improving the quality, processes, etc., which eventually results in increased customer loyalty, and revenue.

Importance of Total Quality Management in production and operations management

  • TQM ensures superior quality products and services. The single-most important objective of TQM is to deliver a high quality product, which not just meets the customers’ expectations, but exceeds it, delivering customer satisfaction. With it, the manufacturing organizations can check an important box in production and operations management, i.e., delivering customer satisfaction, and survive the cut-throat competition.
  • TQM is essential for customer loyalty. All the successful businesses thrive not only on new customers, but also on the loyal set of customers they are able to retain in the long run. And how do they retain them? The answer is by understanding their needs, meeting them, and also taking their constant feedback to understand the change in their preferences. Here the TQM approach comes in handy, ensuring high quality products/services by eliminating any chances of defects as well as incorporating continuous improvements in the system. This in turn leads to loyal and satisfied customers who bring ten new customers along with them. Tools such as a quality management system (QMS) can help organizations design and create products of exactly the customers’ choice.
  • TQM ensures increased revenues and higher productivity. With greater customer loyalty, comes repeat business, which in turn increases cash flow, creates better business opportunities, and also results in better pay for the employees, thus satisfying them and helping create a healthy workplace. In a nutshell, TQM processes make an organization a better place to work, and enable their employees to deliver more using less resources.

Benefits of Total Quality Management in production and operations management

  • Reduced product defects and product recalls 
  • Reduced costs in customer support, product replacements, and service 
  • Improved competitive position
  • Adaptability to changing market conditions 
  • Reduced risk in designing new products and processes 
  • Improved image in the market 

Quality management system for the TQM approach

Manufacturing organizations often turn to a TQM software, or a QMS software for the application of the TQM approach to their businesses. With functionalities such as non-conformance (NC) and Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA) management, change management, complaint management, training management, and document management at its core, a QMS system can act as a TQM software, and help businesses by improving their quality processes.

It essentially does so by offering a structured platform which drives continuous improvement by capturing all documents, and interactions, related to quality improvement, by structuring the workflows and providing alerts and notifications to bridge the gaps between organizational levels and teams, and bringing everyone on the same page by providing with access to the information they require.

How we can help

If you’re interested in finding out more about how a TQM software, or a QMS software, can play a significant role in streamlining the production as well as operations management functions in your business, then you’re at the right place. Write to our in-house quality experts at QualityMaster for scheduling a demo, or simply having a no-obligation discussion.

What is the Difference between Risk Management and Quality Management?

Charulata Soral on March 14, 2022

These days, quality has become paramount for all the business organizations. Regardless of the industry they operate in, or the scale of their operations, quality is at the forefront of everything they do. In fact, more and more businesses are taking steps for continuous quality improvement in their products and services, so as to meet the customer requirements as well as the stringent compliance standards.

This focus on continual improvement helps the organizations drive operational excellence, which also has two fundamental aspects as pre-requisites: Quality Management and Risk Management. Both these aspects go a long way in helping businesses achieve their quality objectives, and in fact are often considered as the two sides of the same coin.

But can they actually be referred to as the two sides of a coin, or are they different? And if yes, then how does risk management differ from quality management? What is it about risk management vs quality management system? Let’s try and answer the questions for you all through this blog. But before starting, let’s take a look at the concept of risk management and quality management through their definitions.

Quality Management

Quality Management can be thought of as a tool or a mechanism that allows organizations to design and deliver products or services while taking care of the quality and compliance requirements. It ensures that the products and/or services delivered are of consistent quality, every single time, and the quality processes are:

  • Effective, as in they help create products/services that meet or exceed the customer’s expectations
  • Efficient in a way that they allow creation of products and services without wasting any resources
  • Economical in the sense that they allow generation of requisite revenues so that the organization can be sustained

Quality Management basically has four key components namely: Quality Control, Quality Assurance, Quality Improvement, and Quality Planning. Its objective is not just to focus on the quality of products/services, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality is all about the product, process, or system performing as per its planned or desired function.

Quality Management involves the development, implementation, and application of standard operating procedures (SOPs), tests, policies, and corrective processes, etc. to ensure that the organizations deliver intended results on the quality front from the end customer’s perspective.

Risk Management

As far as risk management is concerned, it is a tool to identify, evaluate, prioritize, and address potential risks in order to monitor, control, and even eliminate the possibilities of unfortunate events happening, and thus help the organization achieve its objectives. It’s an approach that can be termed as proactive, predictive, preventive, and preemptive.

Application of risk management allows organizations to make informed decisions based on the identified risks, and consequently keep the quality of the products intact by maintaining a strong relationship with different stakeholders including customers, suppliers, and the employees. The process, which may be lengthy and tedious, is worthy enough as it helps prevent costly reworks, recalls, and non-conformances.

It is an extremely important function for organizations because in the absence of risk management, an organization cannot possibly define its future business objectives in an effective manner. Any business objective that’s being defined without taking the risks into account is bound to miss its mark, with the organization losing its direction once the risks hit the business.

Quality Management & Risk Management in modern context

Not till too long ago, organizations used to operate smoothly on the back of some sound forecasting. However, the uncertain economic times brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic forced the organizations to change their ways. Now the same organizations refrain from making business predictions, and instead have shifted focus towards managing risk.

Organizations nowadays realize risk is the prime cause of uncertainty for them, and hence focus their energies on identifying risks and managing them proactively before they become a potential problem and affect business. Though they can’t control the external risks such as political issues, interest rates, and so on, they definitely can manage the internal risks like non-compliance, among several others.

The whole idea behind risk management is to ensure that the organizations keep the risks under control so that they can achieve their primary objectives of continuous improvement and designing & delivering quality products and services. Needless to say, at the core remains the objective of delivering quality to the end consumer.

Two distinct functional areas with same end objective

Even as Quality Management and Risk Management work as two distinct functional areas, they are actually intricately linked with each other. While quality is an end objective organizations keep in mind during production of goods or delivery of service, risk is essentially the effect of uncertainty on that objective.

Risk management is about managing these effects of uncertainty on the end objective of quality, and a tool that can be used for managing these effects could be quality management. It is thus safe to say that at some level, risk management is inherent in a quality management approach.

We have discussed about Quality Management in detail in our previous blog (Also here). Talking about Risk Management in particular, it ensures that organizations meet compliance standards while having an effective decision-making structure in place. It also ensures organizations experience improvements in terms of efficiency as well as consistency of the quality, also the objectives of quality management.

Few other benefits of risk management include:

  • Helps establish a proactive culture that fosters improvement 
  • Assures quality consistency
  • Facilitates improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
  • Provides opportunity to improve operational efficiency
  • Helps build greater confidence amongst stakeholders
  • Facilitates improved system performance

How the two are aligned

In the current scenario, businesses need a clear understanding of the risks involved in the product or process outputs while implementing a quality management system. They need an idea about potential severity and possibility of any unforeseen event happening. This information allows them to train their focus of efforts on the areas of greatest risk within the quality management system.

Facilitates improved customer satisfaction and loyalty Provides opportunity to improve operational efficiency Helps build greater confidence amongst stakeholders Facilitates improved system performance

Conclusion

To sum up, the quality management and risk management processes are inherently linked. From an organization’s perspective, it is important that both the processes are effectively implemented, and integrate with each other in a seamless manner.

The two might be functionally divided in most of the organizations, but the key for the organizations lies in effectively linking both the quality and risk processes with continuous, clear, and transparent two-way communication flows.

We hope this blog could help you understand the concept of risk management and quality management. If you have any query on the subject, or want to know more about our quality management software, you may write to us to schedule a demo or a no-obligation discussion with our quality experts at QualityMaster.