The Quality Management System

The Quality Management System (QMS) is the most important system in a business. In fact, it is the backbone of any business that keeps everything together and moving in the right direction at a quality acceptable to your clients and customers. How strange then that most small businesses do not have a QMS in place. It is unfortunately one of those things that business owners feel they do not have the time to put in place when they just start out. When it comes to bite them, they run around, madly trying to put it in place because, truth to tell, they still do not have time, but by then, they already have a monster on their hands and it is difficult to tame.

So what exactly is a Quality Management System? Let’s start by first defining quality. There are many different definitions for quality but as business owners we are interested in two. Firstly, quality has to do with the specific attributes of something, whether a product or a service. Secondly, it has to do with “a degree or grade of excellence or worth“. As business owners we can summarize this as “meeting or exceeding the customer’s expectations”. This is very important. Because a happy customer is a returning customer.

Elements to Quality

There are two elements to quality. Both are equally important: repeatability and reproducibility.

Repeatability is the ability to get more or less the same test results every time you test your product. We are talking about one product here. Let’s look at a simple example. Say I am building cars. Every time I test the quality of the brakes, I want to get the same result, never varying. This car’s brakes must have the same efficiency after having been used a hundred times that it had after its first use. It means that they test those brakes many, many times to determine when they start deteriorating and then they inform the customer that the brakes have to be replaced by a certain number of kilometres, well before they start deteriorating. To go back to our definitions, you want to define the attributes that give your product or service its worth or degree of excellence. This is what repeatability gives you.

Once you have repeatability, you need reproducibility. What is needed to reproduce the product or service over and over again with the same attributes and the same degree of worth?

Continuous Improvement

Add to this continuous improvement and then you will understand what a Quality Management System is. Continuous improvement does not only want the same results, it wants those results to be improving. This means that you should continually be monitoring what you are doing and then act on what you are seeing.

Plan

What you need to understand is that you can know what you need to do but unless you intentionally make a plan and write it out, it will not happen. This is what a Quality Management System is. The plan you make and implement to meet or exceed your customers’ expectations.

Can you see why it is so vital to your business?

Procedures

To ensure repeatability and reproducibility a business needs procedures. Procedures are like a recipe. It tells you what the ingredients or raw materials are that you need. In this day and age it also identifies the safety procedures you have to follow. Then it tells you step-by-step the actions you need to take.

Traceability

There are many different quality management systems today, e.g. Total Quality, Six Sigma, and ISO 9000. For some, like ISO 9000, your business can even get accreditation. This can be very daunting to a small business owner. They see the expense involved and then simply throw in the towel. What you need to understand though is that many big businesses require that their suppliers must have some sort of QMS. It does not necessarily have to be accredited but it must be recorded. This means that it must be a written plan that provides traceability. Traceability involves tracking the process that my product/service went through from beginning to end. I can show where the quality was checked and I have the records to prove it.

Quality Assurance

Quality is checked at least three times during the process.

At the Input Stage

This is where supplier quality comes in. If you know that your supplier has some sort of QMS, you do not need to spend so much time in checking input quality. But you still need to verify the quality of your raw products or whatever goes into your service. If, for example, your service is to provide training this would be the time to check your training materials. If you are building, this is where you will make sure the building materials comply with regulations.

During Operations

Depending on your product or service there can be one or many quality checks during production or service rendering. You want to make sure that you are still on track. It can be a test or homework during training. This would be when you take out your plumb line, water level and measuring tape during construction. Or where you would run laboratory tests from the production line. If there are different stages during production/service, it works well to check quality at the end of every stage.

At the Output

Before you send your product away or sign off on your service you must make sure that it complies with what you promised to deliver. So, you test it again. It is here where you provide a Certificate of Compliance. A COC is the proof that what you provide complies with your own QMS requirements and that your product or service is what you offered to provide. You have to be so certain of this that your customer can come back if there is a product failure. A business’ reputation is established when the supplier experiences a product failure and they do not suspect the materials you supplied because your materials never fail.

Is Quality Possible?

Is it possible for a small business to ensure a quality service or product? Yes. Is it affordable for a small business to implement a Quality Management System? Yes. Can your business afford to go without Quality Management? No.

If you need help with a QMS for your business or advice about it, contact us.

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“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Dream

Growing up we had a beautiful piano. It was a Bechstein piano which my parents had imported from Germany. We loved music; indeed it was an integral part of our lives. The piano was part of it.  To me, as a 3-year-old that piano was the most beautiful thing in our house. Contributing to its beauty was the way my sisters, who were respectively 9 and 10 years older than me, played on it. I admired them greatly (I still do). In those days, to be honest, some of that admiration had to do with how they could play the piano.

I was 3 and I wanted to own that piano. Not only play on it, but I wanted it for my own. My parents said the one who studied the furthest would inherit it. There was a rule that all the sisters had to take lessons up to grade 7. My sisters were nearly there but I had not yet started!

Plan

So, at age 3, I had a goal… I was going to get that piano. I realised that I would need to make a start and so found my brother’s music book. He showed me the first three notes in the book and on the piano and I taught myself the rest from there.

Through the years there were many obstacles. In the town where I grew up, they did not want to teach piano lessons to anyone younger than 9. But I was 7 when my mom took me for my first lessons. By this time, my mom had realised that I was serious. At last, she found someone who was willing to take me as long as we did not advertise the fact.

Unfortunately, this lady moved away after a few years and again we could not find anybody who was willing to take me on. You see, the problem was that I was not regarded as a prodigy. And I was adamant that I wanted to play grade 8 by the time I was 16. This was, quite frankly, in the view of the local music school an achievement reserved for music prodigies. But then I met a teacher who told me that if I were serious about this and the commitment it required; she would take me. A few months after my 16th birthday, I played Grade 8, and my dad inscribed my name on the inside of that piano!

Necessity of a Strategic Plan

Would I have been able to do this if that goal had not been that clear in my mind? Getting up at 5 every morning for years to practice while everyone else was still sleeping? Practicing for 3 and later 4 hours every afternoon before my final exam when music was not one of my school subjects?

No, it would not have happened.

Would I have been able to fight to get a teacher to take me through to my final exam if this goal had not been clear in my mind? No, it would not have happened.

I wanted that piano and I planned on getting it.

Purpose, Vision and Mission

This is what is needed for any endeavour in life (business included) to succeed. You need a clear picture in your mind of what you want to achieve. This is called the vision. You need to know why you want to achieve it. This is your purpose and provides the motivation. To get back to my story, my vision was to play Grade 8 and my purpose was to own that piano.

But it was not enough to have that dream. A dream stays in Neverland until you start working on it. The how to get to see your dream fulfilled is called the mission. My mission was to take piano lessons until I could play that exam. The strategic plan is how you break everything down into smaller chunks (goals and objectives) to bring you to your ultimate vision and purpose. My strategic plan was to learn to read notes, find a teacher, play the required exams and fulfil the theoretical requirements. There were specific dates by which I wanted to reach each goal.

SMARTER Goals

I had a SMARTER vision.  I like Michael Hyatt’s version of SMARTER:

• My vision was Specific: I wanted to play Grade 8 by the time I was 16. Be very specific about what you want to achieve.
• It was Measurable: I wanted to play Grade 8. In essence, if you want to know how something is doing, you have to be able to measure it.
• The plan was Actionable: there was action to be taken and an action verb in there – I wanted to play.
• It was Risky: I was not a prodigy and according to all the “knowledgeable” people around me therefore it was not doable.
• I had a Time in mind: I wanted to attain my goal by age 16.
• It was Exciting: it was incredibly exciting to see how I was catching up with my sisters when I had been 10 years behind them!
• My plan was Relevant: I had to go up to Grade 7 anyway… by and large the timing and season in my life was right.

Just something about the first R. Most people feel there should not be risk. You should rather do something that is doable. But keep this in mind: without risk there will never be growth and development. For example, a baby learns to walk by taking the risk to fall. In doing this the baby’s muscles develop and grow. Without taking that risk, chances are really slim that the baby would ever walk. I am not necessarily advocating taking blind risk. But a calculated risk is good if you want your business to grow.

Strategic Plan = Route Plan

A strategic plan is then the plan for how you will take your business from point A to point B. It is like the route plan for a journey. The car will be serviced, and tires checked. The tank will be filled. We will stop for bathroom breaks at the following locations, 2 hours apart. Every second stop we will have a cup of coffee. At the third stop we will fill up the fuel tank again. Every fourth stop we will stop to overnight.

Content of a Strategic Plan

A strategic plan for a business should contain the following:

• A purpose statement – this is the motivation for what you want to do;
• A vision statement – this is what you want to achieve… remember that it must be SMARTER;
• A mission statement – gives the broader framework for how you are going to achieve it;
• The values by which you want to conduct business – it provides the ethical boundaries within which you operate;
• The long-term goals – this is the vision broken up into smaller actions;
• Those goals broken up into short term objectives or tasks;
• The logistics required to achieve the goals and objectives;
• A marketing and communications strategy – this describes how you are planning to get buy-in from investors and customers;
• A financial plan showing projections for the first number of years.

Going back to our quote in the beginning: Failing to plan is planning to fail. This is one of those things without which a business cannot be sustainable. A strategic plan takes time to formulate but it is time well spent. It provides direction for your business to go as well as the route map for getting there. Without a strategic plan chances are good that your business will become part of the 80% that do not survive after the first year.

If you need any assistance with your strategic planning, contact us.

I want to invite you to use our free template you help you start a strategic plan for your business.

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WWF

What does water scarcity have to do with small business?

You might wonder what on earth has an article on water scarcity to do with small business. Our answer is straight forward: everything. Kanetwen has been developing manuals on water and wastewater treatment for 20 years now. During that time, we became more and more concerned about the water situation in our country. We started telling family and friends and whoever we encountered that there was cause for concern. People listened politely and all of us (we included) just went on with our lives.

Dr Anthony Turton

Then in 2010 the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research suspended Dr Anthony Turton with immediate effect before he could make a speech in which he would have spoken about the dangers of the water quality in South Africa. He warned that this would cause “social instability” to grow. Although many of us talked about what had happened to him and spoke about the unfairness, many actually missed his message. Nothing was done about the water quality and very few people spoke up about it.

Then the service delivery protests came. Times Live quoted Municipal IQ as saying that 94 % of service delivery protests were violent in 2018.

Water Scarcity in Cape Town

Then came Cape Town. After three consecutive dry years, the city council announced that it was running out of water. This from a municipality which ranked # 1 as far as Performance Results for South Africa’s 8 largest cities. How was this possible? Day Zero was around the corner. The city launched a media campaign like you could not believe and the disaster was averted. But not before restrictions came down to a two-minute shower, flushing the toilet once per day, washing a load of dishes and regular drinking, cooking, cleaning and tooth-brushing. Business and industry had to reduce their use of municipal drinking water by 45 % and agricultural users had to reduce their water use by 60 %.

Where drought had always been an agricultural problem, it became everybody’s problem this time around. We cannot attest to what happened on the ground in Cape Town, but can you imagine? How does a hairdresser curb water use by 45 % without influencing their income? How does a car wash curb water use by 45 %? Sure, they invest in new equipment. But who has that kind of money when you did not plan for it in advance? How does construction continue without water? Let’s go just a little bit outside of town. How do mines operate without water? What happens when the income drops because there is no water?

This was not only a problem in Cape Town. Even in Gauteng small business owners were complaining that the drought had impacted their businesses. Not small business owners that are dependent on agriculture but small business owners like the guy who installs carports. He complained that he had no business because it wasn’t raining – people did not feel like protecting their vehicles.

Water Scarcity and the Rest of the World

We started seeing articles about the water crisis in Cape Town in international news. But something interesting happened. Water scarcity around the world started coming to light. This is not only a South African problem. By no means. Vox published an article in which they claimed that “By 2040, most of the world won’t have enough water to meet demand year-round“. They report that not only Cape Town was having problems. Other cities listed include London, Sao Paolo, Jakarta, Istanbul, Tokyo and Mexico City. Some of these are in developed countries!

Water Scarcity Leads to War

In December 2009 Steven Solomon published his book “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization“. Here Solomon claims that in the 21^st Century wars will be fought over water. He writes: “Consider what will happen in water-distressed, nuclear-armed, terrorist-besieged, overpopulated, heavily irrigation dependent and already politically unstable Pakistan when its single water lifeline, the Indus river, loses a third of its flow from the disappearance from its glacial water source”.

But then we read an article in Newsweek of 24 April 2015 that the scary thing is, the world is already at war over water. They list the wars that are or have been fought recently over water: The Mesopotamian War in Syria with Isis, Turkey vs Isis, India and Pakistan, to mention but a few.

Water Scarcity and Urbanisation

The thing is water quality and water scarcity has never been something that people in cities think too much about. You can just open a tap and the water is flowing. So why worry? Drought has been the farmers’ problem and that is a world away from the city. After all, we find our milk on the shelf, not from a cow!

Lindiwe Sisulu, Minister of Human Settlements, Water & Sanitation in South Africa, tweeted on 5 January 2020: “The amount of water available per person is decreasing as the population grows, which is why we need to constantly raise consciousness to preserve what we have.”

With an urban population of 65,85% in 2017 according to Statista, somewhere along the line we lost contact with reality as far as water scarcity is concerned.

Worldometers reports that South Africa’s population has grown from around 15 million people in 1955 to 59 million people in 2020. Our water resources did not increase. Zambia is a very sad example. Renewable water sources per capita in Zambia (m³/inhabitant/year) has declined from about 32 000 m³ per year in 1962 to just above 5 000 m³ per year in 2017. Zambia had a population of about 10 million people just before 2000. In 2020 Zambia has a population of 18 126 515 people. According to African Vision of Hope “Zambia has hit a water and food shortage crisis“.

Do not make a mistake. Water scarcity is the problem of every citizen on earth – developed or developing. We need to wake up and start planning.

How can one small business make a difference?

But how can one small business make a difference, you ask? Have you ever heard how does one eat an elephant? The answer is… piece by piece. You can make a difference drop by drop. It takes one drop of water to make a bucket overflow. It might be the drop that you saved.

Benjamin Franklin said that “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail“. Here is a very good example of that. We need to plan now how we can make our businesses less water dependent. Because when Day Zero arrives, it will be too late to start planning.

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