Key Points for Building Quality Management Systems in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Quality management refers to the coordinated activities of an organization to direct and control quality, usually including the formulation of quality policies, objectives, as well as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement activities. To achieve the goals of quality management policies and effectively carry out various quality management activities, it is necessary to establish a corresponding quality management system. In modern enterprise management, the ISO9000 quality management system is widely adopted by enterprises. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China, there are still some problems in their quality management systems that need to be gradually improved.

Existing Problems

Currently, the quality management systems of small and medium-sized enterprises in China have the following issues:

1. Lack of quality awareness.

Quality awareness is the correct understanding and judgment of quality requirements by people, as well as the exploration and actions to achieve quality requirements through economically reasonable methods. It refers to the initiative and consciousness of all employees, especially business managers, to do quality work well. For some SMEs that have long operated under a planned economy system, their main task is to "meet targets" and "comply with standards." The mindset established among leaders and employees is "quantity first." Some even pursue quantity alone, neglecting quality, and fail to meet even the minimum standards.

For some private enterprises, the main reason for poor quality lies with the enterprise leaders. Due to their own limitations, their primary concern is the short-term benefits of the enterprise, lacking long-term planning and strategic considerations for the survival and development of the enterprise. They ignore the challenges of new enterprises and the impact of international competition. To some extent, the quality management level of such enterprises has actually weakened, with limited development potential. Therefore, effective measures and methods must be taken to improve employees' quality awareness.

2. Incomplete quality management system processes.

Personnel, facilities, work environment, information resources, stakeholders, financial and natural resources are necessary conditions for quality management. The scale limitations of SMEs lead to serious underinvestment in quality, simple quality management system processes, unclear responsibilities, and insufficient coordination between departments. Their quality system originates from the awareness of senior management, ending at product, research and development, production, and quality inspection stages. There is no quality control and improvement in this process, resulting in the enterprise's inability to effectively formulate quality management policies and objectives, no clear and operable authority and responsibility allocation control structure, greatly limiting product quality.

3. Lagging development of basic quality management work.

Many SMEs replace "management" with "contracting" or "shares," overemphasizing technical, administrative, and economic means. Basic quality management work includes metrology, standardization, quality information management, quality education, quality organization and responsibility, and employee quality management activities. Some SMEs have low personnel quality, poor mastery of basic statistical techniques, rely more on verbal communication than written communication in management, and operate based on experience or memory. Even completed processes lack comprehensive records or are merely formalities, causing processes to often be uncontrolled on site.

4. No dedicated quality management personnel.

SMEs have great arbitrariness in appointing management representatives. They either assign personnel who can spare time and energy to handle document preparation and on-site audits but have no direct connection with enterprise production and operation; or assign personnel without quality management experience and professional knowledge, unable to focus on studying ISO9000 quality standards. This results in management representatives being unable to formulate reasonable and clear quality policies or objectives, unable to lead the preparation of enterprise quality documents independently, relying on imagination or blind copying, ultimately failing to meet enterprise needs. Another situation is the lack of clear authorization and long-term appointment appropriate to the position for the management representative, or the representative lacks authority among employees, making the standard implementation process difficult. After implementation, such personnel's leadership in quality management ends, making it hard for the enterprise to self-improve the quality system, and quality management levels decline continuously.

5. Serious underinvestment in quality management work.

Managers of SMEs, especially private enterprises, mainly focus on sales and external contacts, while matters related to standard implementation, which are crucial to quality, are often "delegated" and rarely personally attended to. They even leave the enterprise's quality policies and objectives to subordinates. Worse still, they hand over the entire standard implementation to consulting companies to handle, making quality management costs more "economical." From paying professional consulting fees to setting up internal quality management organizations, personnel, and testing equipment, they save wherever possible. The result is either the prepared quality system documents seriously do not match the enterprise's quality management needs, or the established quality system cannot be smoothly implemented in the enterprise. Quality management levels cannot improve, and the enterprise will soon be eliminated in international market competition.

Improvement Measures

To improve the quality management system of SMEs, the following aspects need to be addressed:

1. Continuously educate all employees of the enterprise.

Enterprises should conduct broad, in-depth, and lasting quality management system education and training to cultivate employees' quality awareness. Quality management education must be regarded as the "first process" in product quality formation and the foundation of "quality-driven business." Various forms and channels should be used to select key content based on the work characteristics of enterprise leaders, technical management, and on-site operators at all levels, repeatedly conducting quality management education and training. Through extensive training and education, managers and all employees should clearly understand that in future international market competition, products with different quality levels will see the superior quality win. Only with quality is there a market, and only with a market is there benefit. Managers and all employees should also realize that the ISO9000 quality system involves all employees and requires full participation. It is based on a "top-down integrated" management foundation, emphasizing the practical awareness of "quality on site, cost, and benefit."

2. Establish and follow the quality management system.

Enterprise management is familiar with the overall operation status and should personally participate in the standard implementation work, clearly formulating the enterprise's quality policies and objectives. At the same time, when leading the preparation of quality system documents, they should control the level of detail to avoid hindering operation and record-keeping due to excessive detail. The principle should be "write what you do, do what you write, record what you have done." From another perspective, there is no need to abolish existing rules, regulations, and process documents and start anew. Instead, based on the enterprise's actual situation and the selected system elements, some procedural rules, regulations, and operating rules should be deleted or supplemented. This saves investment and obtains a quality system that truly meets the operational needs of SMEs. Meanwhile, the flexible and agile advantages of SMEs are preserved, achieving the greatest benefit with minimal investment.

3. Strengthen innovation and pursue excellence.

Excellent quality develops on the basis of satisfactory quality. It makes customers perceive quality far beyond their expectations, feeling pleasantly surprised, and the quality is defect-free. Essentially, it provides customers with excellent and attractive quality, thereby winning customers and succeeding in competition. The concept of excellent quality offers a new development opportunity and model for the sustainable development of 21st-century enterprises and brings new research topics to quality management. Enterprises can strengthen and enhance their quality competitiveness through some effective measures to approach or achieve excellent quality: develop the enterprise's unique capabilities to bring special benefits and unique skills and technologies to customers; integrate the enterprise's advantageous resources to better meet customer needs and make it difficult for competitors to replicate; comprehensively utilize the enterprise's unique capabilities and resource advantages to create personalized products and services that competitors find hard to imitate.

4. Selecting Quality Managers

Managers are the most critical figures in the entire quality assurance system establishment process. The ISO9000 quality standard assigns them the important responsibility of "ensuring the establishment, implementation, and maintenance of the quality system according to this standard's requirements." Whether the manager is appropriately chosen directly affects the smooth progress of the entire certification work. There are several basic requirements for them:

Have worked in the enterprise for a long time and be familiar with the actual situation of the enterprise;

Hold important leadership positions in the enterprise, with candidates at the quality department manager level or above preferred;

Possess professional knowledge in business administration;

Have prestige among the enterprise and employees, demonstrate leadership style, and emphasize management art;

Have strong learning ability and be able to thoroughly understand the essence of quality management.

Generally speaking, the selected manager should also work under the guidance and assistance of professional consulting institutions to ensure the standard implementation is as effective as possible. For small and medium-sized enterprises, senior leaders must personally take charge and lead by example in promoting quality management.

5. Building a Quality Management Informatization Platform

To improve the core competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, keep pace with the times, and accelerate development, modern informatization methods should be used within the enterprise to integrate with the quality management system, building a quality management informatization platform based on an internal network platform that runs through quality management control standards and processes. The quality management informatization network platform for small and medium-sized enterprises is constructed on a comprehensive customer data foundation, focusing on sales management, production management, and customer service, centered on production operation management. Through the connection of core business processes and various management departments, and using control documents required by the quality management system as specific information management content, records are kept in the internal network information platform's database, forming electronic data for quality management. By applying informatization management methods to form good organizational management and leveraging team strength, the overall quality management level of the enterprise can be raised to a new level, better achieving quality management and control, and providing customers with higher-quality products and services.