As I stood, staring at my big toe which had somehow poked its way through a layer of polyester, it occurred to me that:
In this scenario, I had fallen victim to poor quality control measures.
Purchasing a pair of running shoes not robust enough to meet my needs meant I, as a consumer, was not satisfied and did not repeat my custom with the given brand.
This reaction is to be expected.
A study by Psomas et al, detailed on Emerald Insights, concluded that effective quality control measures, in the form of Quality Management Systems (QMS systems), directly improve employee benefits, business performance, and customer satisfaction.
“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives” – William A Foster, Forbes Quotes
In this Process Street article, we take a look at what quality control is, and how you can implement effective quality control processes in your business today.
You will be presented with 19 free templates, ready and waiting to be used right away. These templates will help you build and audit your QMS systems, to meet the needs of key stakeholders in your business.
Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to that section, alternatively, scroll down to read all I have to say.
In business, quality control is the process of ensuring a product or service standard is sufficient or surpasses customer expectations.
Let’s face it, no one wants to deliver a product and/or service that will cause disappointment. Just as much as we, as consumers, don’t want to splash out on a faulty purchase.
Quality control prevents key stakeholders from becoming disappointed in your product/service.
For your business, the implementation of an effective quality control system will:
An impressive list. However, in my opinion, the true value of a quality control system cannot be realized until you explore real-life scenarios, with the question: What happens in the absence of an effective quality control system?
On top of holey shoes and cold toes, with this question in mind, I have detailed the below examples:
As the saying goes…
Considering these instances, it is easy to see how good quality control systems are a vital cog when it comes to maintaining quality, to deliver stakeholder expectations.
Moving on from the what and the why, the remainder of this article will explain how you can implement effective quality control processes.
Enter: Process Street
Process Street is superpowered checklists.
With Process Street you can create a checklist template for any process. Whether that is onboarding new customers, sending an invoice, or dealing with customer inquiries.
If you are new to Process Street and a little unsure about what it is we offer, watch our below webinar: An Introduction to Process Street.
How can you use Process Street as a means of quality control?
When you create a template in Process Street, you have a documented step-by-step guide of exactly how the given process needs to be carried out, to deliver the standards required to succeed. By succeed, we mean delivering, or better, surpassing stakeholder expectations.
Anyone in your team can jump into these documented processes, executing them with impeccable accuracy. For instance, take our content creation process. As a content writer, to begin a new article I follow specified processes:
To summarize, there are three quality control processes I use to fulfill my content creator duties:
These individual processes are part of a broader Quality Management System, that includes further team-wide content creation processes that work in synchrony:
Each process supplements the other, controlling content quality at the standard expected from Process Street’s blog readers – hello . As mentioned, this collection of quality control processes forms a Quality Management System (QMS).
A Quality Management System (QMS) is a collection of business processes, refined, tailored, and adapted to meet the needs of key stakeholders.
In the example used above, you caught a glimpse of the quality management system Process Street uses to consistently produce high-quality content. However, the principle works the same for any business operation and its constituent processes.
It is recommended that each process in a quality management system meets 7 quality management principles, namely:
When creating your quality control processes in Process Street, be sure to incorporate these 7 quality management principles.
For more information on how to create and edit templates with Process Street, watch the below video: Basics of Creating and Editing Templates.
With knowing how to implement quality control processes, creating QMS systems, your next step is to judge the effectiveness of these systems. This is where audits, as quality control measures, come into play.
Coming back to the basics, what is an audit?
“An audit is the process of evaluation or analysis of something to determine its accuracy or safety, or is the document that declares the result of such an analysis or evaluation.” – Your Dictionary, Audit
An audit is an assessment of quality.
Setting up processes as a means of quality control is just one step in the production of valuable QMS systems. Who is to say that your QMS systems are adequate?
An audit provides a formal evaluation of your business processes, to highlight areas of concern or areas in need of improvement.
Regarding quality management systems, there are two ways audits should be used:
An audit process is a set of steps taken together to evaluate or analyze something to determine its accuracy or safety.
Above we detailed to two ways audits should be used as part of a QMS. In this next section, you will find out how you can execute these steps.
Use Process Street’s ISO 9001 Internal Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems alongside your QMS systems, to make sure your QMS systems abide by the 7 recommended principles.
By using our ISO 19001 Internal Audit Checklist, you will:
Having assessed your QMS as a whole, the next stage is to look at the individual processes within your QMS. You want your QMS processes to abide by internal and external standards to churn out the quality you need.
For instance, financial audits evaluate an organization’s financial reports and reporting processes in an objective and independent manner. This gives regulators, investors, directors, and managers reasonable assurance the financial statements are accurate and complete. As a quality control measure, your financial processes must supplement each other to meet the requirements set by such stakeholders. It is therefore recommended that your financial QMS includes internal audits to ensure this.
This is true for any business process. Incorporating an auditing process as part of your QMS will maintain maximum QMS control and effectiveness.
To help you with this, Process Street has a wealth of pre-made and free template resources, created to assist internal audit procedures of common business operations. These templates are given below, categorized as per the relevant business area.
In these internal audit templates, you will find the following features, creating dynamic quality control auditing machines:
Don’t forget, you can create your own internal audit processes, like the ones listed below, using Process Street.
The first audit processes were financial, dating back into the 18th century. It, therefore, seems fitting to begin our comprehensive internal audit list, with our internal financial audit process.
Include this internal financial audit process as part of your financial QMS systems
Use our Financial Audit Checklist to evaluate your organization’s financial reports and reporting processes in an objective and independent manner.
Environmental audits assess business practices with the aim to minimize the harm caused to the environment, in accordance with stakeholder requirements. Environmental audits are an environmental management tool. However, depending on the types of standards and the focus of the audit, there are different types of environmental audits.
Include our internal environmental audits as part of your environmental QMS systems
Our Environmental Accounting Internal Audit checklist can support your business’s accounting quality control processes for the attainment and retainment of a sustainability focus.
The ISO 14001 Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist should be run as you perform an internal audit on an Environmental Management System (EMS), against the requirements set out in ISO 14001:2015.
Management auditing looks at an organization’s managerial aspects of the business. The aim is to improve the efficiency and performance of these operations, for improved quality.
Include our internal management audits as part of your management QMS systems
ISO 9000 is a family of quality management system standards. These standards are designed to help organizations construct, maintain, and continuously improve their quality management systems.
Here we have our ISO 19011 Management Systems Audit Checklist created from the guidelines set out in ISO 19011:2018 for auditing your management systems.
This ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 Integrated Management System (IMS) Checklist integrates your ISO 9001 internal audit (which has a purely managerial focus) with your ISO 14001 internal audit (which has an environmental focus). Integrating the two procedures provides a single unified integrated management strategy with a sustainability focus.
As already discussed above, our ISO 9001 Internal Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems template lays out a step-by-step process for you to perform an internal audit on your Quality Management System (QMS) against ISO 9001:2015 requirements.
As the marketing industry shifts with rapid-paced movement, it can be hard for your business to keep up. It is important to make sure your QMS’s marketing processes are in tune with the business landscape at any given time. Performing regular internal marketing audits means you can do just this as a means of quality control.
Include our internal marketing audits as part of your marketing QMS systems
Our PPC Audit Checklist is an in-depth framework covering core focus areas of your PPC marketing strategy. Using this internal audit, you are guided through goal setting, optimization of campaign sets, budget allocation, keyword review, and proper ad extension choice.
Our Google Analytics Audit comes in with necessity via ensuring you obtain good data from Google Analytics. Performing regular internal audits assures your data is complete, up-to-date, and configured correctly.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing method to boost your website’s visibility online to users of a web search engine. You can use our Technical SEO Audit to audit your domain and generate a comprehensive report on the current status of your website. From this audit, you will find out what is working and what is not in terms of your SEO strategy. With this internal audit, you can improve upon your SEO strategy, and ultimately your online visibility.
You can use our UX Audit to review your website’s user experience. This audit scrutinizes the customer journey through your website, providing an opportunity for tremendous improvement of conversion and engagement metrics.
The infrastructure, policies, and operation of your information technology systems can be examined with an internal information technology audit. By auditing your IT business operations, you can determine the effectiveness of your IT QMSn systems and ensure data integrity.
Include internal information technology audits as part of your IT QMS systems
Process Street’s ISO 27001 Information Security Management System (ISO27K ISMS) Audit Checklist is designed for you to easily perform an internal audit on your organization’s Information Security Management Systems (ISMS), as per the ISO 27001:2013 requirements.
As standards for SQL Server logging compliance tighten, due to data security acts such as HIPAA and PCI DSS, it is becoming increasingly difficult to stay on top of your SQL Server Audit. This is why Process Street has created the SQL Server Audit Checklist, to ease the process of carrying out an SQL Server Audit.
Our Firewall Audit Checklist provides you with a step-by-step guide, to scrutinize your firewall shield. This internal audit reviews firewall protection with the intention of optimizing security and performance.
Our Network Security Audit Checklist is designed for you to perform effective checks on security measures within your infrastructure. Ths audit checklist is designed to be used by large organizations, to perform in-house audits as part of an on-going risk assessment.
An internal workplace audit looks into the policies and procedures of a business associated with Human Resources and other areas of the organization. The purpose is to ensure that a given employer’s internal workplace processes are at the required quality, meeting laws and regulations. In addition to maintaining a happy and healthy working environment.
Include internal workplace audits as part of your Human Resource QMS systems
Process Street’s ISO 45001 Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Audit Checklist can be run to perform an internal audit on an organization’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management system, against the ISO 45001:2018 requirements.
Having a broad and diverse workforce can benefit your company culture, resulting in high productivity and profitability. You can use our Diversity Management Monthly Audit checklist to manage your diversity operation at the end of every month.
The audits presented above are applicable to most industries and businesses. However, some business operations and procedures are more unique. This does not mean they should escape internal checks and audits. It is important to make sure you have internal audit measures for all your QMS systems, so they are carried out as required. This could mean the creation of niche internal audits.
Create your unique, specialized internal audit quality control checks for your QMS systems using Process Street
Below are some examples of Process Street’s industry-specific internal audit checklists, to give you an idea of the kind of checklist templates you can create for your QMS systems.
Using internal audits such as the ISO 4001 Environmental Management Self Audit Checklist can help you reach your sustainability goals. Sometimes though, it is good to delve into industry-specific details. You can do this by implementing a more specialized audit to assess how sustainable your business operations are.
Here we have our Hotel Sustainability Audit giving you an example of such an industry-specific audit.
Our Laboratory Safety Procedure Audit exemplifies how you can set up your own specific internal health and safety audit as part of your QMS systems.
Like our Store Audit Checklist, you can adopt a more unique approach for your internal management audits.
In this article, I have explained what quality management systems are and why they are needed for delivering value to the key stakeholders of your business.
You have found out how you can use Process Street to create quality control processes, which work together and supplement one-another in a Quality Management System (QMS). Incorporating audit processes, as part of your QMS systems is recommended, and you have been provided with our top – free – auditing processes to help you get started.
In addition, you can use our ISO 9001 Internal Audit Checklist for Quality Management Systems audit as a quality control check on your QMS as a whole. That is, certifying that your QMS delivers on the 7 recommended principles:
For more information on quality control and quality management systems, check out the following resources:
How do you ensure quality in your business? What systems and processes do you use as part of your quality control measures? How do you know that your quality control measures are effective? Please comment below as we would love to hear from you. Who knows, you may even get featured in an upcoming article!
