Standards, a roadmap for quality assurance

By Dr. Lalith Seneweera

Many organisations whether private or public strive to provide an efficient service. These organisations use different approaches and techniques to achieve this goal.

When it comes to private sector organisations such as manufacturing or service, the organisations have to face stiff competition in the market and, therefore, it is necessary to assure the quality of products or services so as to maintain the market position in the long run.

Unless these organisations are geared to face competition by improving the quality of products or services it will be difficult to meet the challenges in the market.

In this context, it is important to find out the methods, tools and techniques available to build and strengthen the quality aspects of an organisation so that the organisations can use the concepts to improve and develop quality within the organisation.

Standards for products, processes, materials, services play a vital role in building the quality assurance function within any organisation.

Standards

There are different types of standards such as International Standards, Regional Standards, National Standards, Company Standards and these documents specify methods, criteria, needs or guidelines that an organisation should adopt or practise to assure quality of products or services and, thereby, follow the standards through which organisations can directly enter the quality assurance process based on a scientific approach by using principles such as measuring, evaluating and taking decisions based on facts.

For instance, if an organisation wishes to purchase material there should be a baseline or criteria to be used when purchasing material otherwise the organisation will suffer by purchasing material which cannot be used.

To overcome, this situation it is important to have a standard which prescribes the needs applicable for that material at the time of purchasing. The organisation can quote the needs as given in the standard and once the materials are received it could be assessed against the standard and then a decision made to accept or reject the materials.

Since the decision is based on scientific principles, using a well accepted standard, the end result is the organisation purchases quality materials.

Commercial transactions or contracts carried out without referring to standards are not possible as it is difficult to agree with the desired characteristics and quality, and to determine whether the products provided matched those levels.

Acceptable criteria

Quality Assurance is a methodology which ensures that the quality aspect is built up in every section of the organisation to provide quality products and services to satisfy customers in a consistent manner.

In this regard it is important to ensure that the activities and functions of the organisation are carried out using an acceptable criteria.

In other words, the organisation should have a policy stemming from the top to ensure the maintenance of the standards by training and educating people to carry out activities as per the relevant standards.

Sometimes, standard may be a guideline and in such situations the organisation should develop a mechanism to translate the standard to meet the needs of the organisation considering the specific process or product.

Some of the issues that organisations face in developing a quality assurance environment are:

Lack of a proper institutional infrastructure to support and offer guidance on issues such as technology, packaging or distribution and how it can be sorted out using standards, lack of trained or qualified manpower in the area of quality in addition to other fields, no clear commitment at the top to use standards as part of quality improvement programs, lack of understanding regarding the use of standards and its economic benefits at policy level of the organisation, lack of management commitment and awareness about the importance of quality assurance programs as no cost benefit analysis is carried out.

It is important to remember that the market is competitive and survival in the competitive markets depends on the satisfaction of consumers or clients and to ensure that that satisfaction can be maintained in a consistent manner it is vital to conduct Quality Assurance programs and develop it. Standards can be used as the baseline within the organisation so that organisation can consistently provide better service and products to consumers.

The writer is the Director General of the Sri Lanka Standards Institution