One of the core requirements of ISO 9001 is continual improvement. In fact, continual improvement is so essential to the standard that it is seen as a part of quality management, where companies are urged to constantly look for ways to improve the manner in which they are conducting their activities or their procedures. In this article, we will talk about why continual improvement is important and discuss widely utilised methods for initiating this repetitive cycle.

What is the continual improvement?

Generally speaking, continual improvement is based upon the idea that small changes that are done in a well-calculated manner can lead to ongoing improvements that continue to improve in size over time. Hence, another way of defining continual improvement is that it is a concept that making small changes in a calculated manner today can lead to bigger results tomorrow.  That’s why ISO consulting services are very popular because ISO consulting help businesses to get big results by making small changes.

PDCA iso 9001 continual improvement

How do ISO standards incorporate continual improvement?

The majority of the ISO standards incorporate the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle as a tool or a model for implementing continual improvement. For example, ISO 9001 PDCA is a good framework for quality management system continual improvement. This framework helps a company evaluate its management practices and its willingness to let go of ideas that are not ingrained in evidence.

Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle and continual improvement

The general overview of this four stage quality assurance cycle include:

  • Plan: In this stage, the company develops a plan for improving its current Quality Management System (QMS), that is tailored to the specific needs of the organisation.
  • Do: In this stage, the organisation attempts to materialise the plan by beginning to make changes as per the intention, into its processes and procedures.
  • Check: In this stage, the organisation evaluates the results of the changes that they have implemented to determine if they were successful or not.
  • Act: Some quality management experts claim that this is the stage that helps to harbour in continual improvement into organisations. During this stage, the organisation implements the changes permanently if they are deemed to be successful. If these changes are not found to be successful, the organisation goes back to the initial phase and attempts to replan how it will improve its processes and procedures.

Some other methods that help to welcome quality improvement into the organisation include the Six Sigma rule and lean principles. The Six Sigma rule is a process that utilises data analysis to reduce errors or defects and to analyse areas of improvement. The lean principle focuses on efficiency by removing redundancies and overlaps from workflows.

ISO 9001 and continual improvement

In the earlier version of the standard, namely, ISO 9001:2008 version, clause 8.5.1 was dedicated to continual improvement. This clause dictated that the driving goal of the standard should be the attempt to improve the current processes. Additionally, organisations were required to demonstrate their attempts to achieve continual improvement. In the 2015 version, clause 10.3 is dedicated to continual improvement. The majority of the auditors expect the organisations to update their QMS documentation as the system matures or whenever a new process is implemented.

However, the new version of ISO 9001 asks organisations to determine procedures that identify improvement opportunities. Such procedures should get updated when the management system is underperforming by utilising data outputs from its processes. The underperformance evaluation is supplemented by data analysis, internal auditing, management reviews and the usage of appropriate metrics.

ISO 9001 Continual improvement process

Continual improvement expects organisations to supplement evidence that investigate the causes and thereby establish processes for improving the following:

  • Policies
  • Objectives
  • Positive and negative risks
  • Aspects and impacts
  • Hazard identification and mitigation of safety risks
  • Analysis and evaluation of data
  • Management reviews
  • Auditing and audit results
  • Nonconformities and corrective actions

Processes can always be made more effective when the aim of continual improvement is utilised as the foundation of improving efficiency. This means that the organisation should constantly plan improvement systems by taking into account how the activities are performing.

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Benefits of continual improvement in ISO 9001

As you were reading this article, you may be constantly wondering why organisations are putting in so much effort to create processes that continually improve. The answer is simple. Any system, procedure or process that is self-improving means that the owners have to put in lesser effort to reap larger benefits.

When talking about ISO 9001, the benefits of the standards are a consequence of continual improvement. Let us discuss a common benefit of ISO 9001, which is enhanced employee productivity. Employee productivity improves as managers constantly seek ways to improve their performance, and thereby engage with their employees to identify the areas where they need support and the areas that they find redundant.

Hence, by incorporating the PDCA cycle with the employees, better outcomes can be achieved. Similarly, another common benefit of ISO 9001 is the creation of lesser waste. When the PDCA cycle is applied to the work processes, areas of redundancies are identified, and as processes become more lean, less wastage is created.

Conclusion

Continual improvement is the process of implementing small and well calculated changes today that lead to bigger benefits tomorrow. PDCA cycle helps organisations with continual improvement by allowing them to create actionable plans that can be evaluated and modified.