Quality Assurance - 42 Consulting

Quality is the ability to entirely satisfy implied and stated needs.  QA is the act of embedding quality in the processes used to develop products.  QA aims to prevent defects in the finished product.  It is a proactive quality process.  Activities include evaluating overall performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the end product will satisfy the relevant quality standards.   Our quality assurance team, has extensive experience in the end-to-end project life cycle (PLC) and systems development life cycle (SDLC).  We are driven to assist organisations in maintaining a desired level of excellence through quality planning, quality assurance and quality control.  The act of embedding quality in a PLC aims to prevent defects in the finished product and reduce the costs of re-work.

We apply the ISO 9000 family of QMS standards.  These standards can be adopted by any organisation, large or small, regardless of its industry.  We will combine ISO 9001 with an ISO’s that is applicable to your program.

The application of the ISO 9000 family of QMS standards is explained below:

Customers
The firsts step in implementing a QMS is to determine the requirements of your end users and other interested parties.  This step is crucial in order to ensure that the organisation can provide products and services that meet customer needs and applicable regulatory requirements.  It is always advisable to monitor and review customer requirements, should there be any significant changes.

Management responsibility
Top management should always demonstrate leadership and commitment by taking accountability of the effectiveness of the QM.  This can be done by ensuring that the quality policy and quality objectives are established; promoting awareness of the process approach, amongst others.

Resource management
An organisation should determine and provide the resources needed for the establishment, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the QMS. Resources include: people, infrastructure, buildings, measuring resources, knowledge and skills.  An integral part of resource management is training and awareness.  This will ensure that the quality policy and objectives are known to all staff.

Product realisation
This part of the process is concerned with planning and implementing the control of processes that are needed to meet the products and services requirements.  A precursor to this process is establishing the criteria and processes for the acceptance of products and services.

Measurement analysis and evaluation
An organisation should always monitor customer perceptions in terms of the degree to which requirements have been met.  An excellent way of obtaining customer views and opinions is to conduct user satisfaction surveys.
 
Continuous improvement
Continuous improvement will ultimately lead to enhanced customer satisfaction. In order to achieve continuous improvement it is vital to determine opportunities for improvement and implement necessary actions to meet customer requirements.  This could include, improving the following items:

• Processes to prevent nonconformities;
• Products and services to meet known and predicted requirements; and
• Quality management system results.