What is the relation between a Quality system and a Continuous Improvement System

First of all, I would like to clarify that the next comments come from my own experience defining and applying Quality and CI systems, I have no book references.

The most important factor involved in the development of both systems is the human being; you need to understand how your collaborators are going to be engaged in the implementation and use of the tools that will help your company to achieve high performance levels in terms of Quality and Productivity.

In first place I am going to speak on Quality Systems, ISO 9000 have the process focus as a basis of its model. That means that your huge process has to be divided in sub processes as needed so that you have a more easy way to manage and control the Quality characteristics into every process.

There is a well known model to define a process:

- Inlets
- Exits
- What procedures are needed to perform the process?
- How many people does the process need to be performed?
- What resources have to be used to run the process?
- What are the metrics to assure that your customer will be satisfied?

As you can see, a Quality system principle is to define how every activity have to be performed and record the results in order to have an analysis basis. This is a good start, but is not the solution for a company that wants to improve their performance or achieve a High Performacne status.

Despite you have designed your process following the ISO model, this process will not guaranty that you are going to achieve the expected results in terms of Quality and Productivity; because it is probably that you have not a robust process designed.

This is the part where you have the opportunity to implement a Continuous Improvement system, that will help you to improve the process through waste elimination by having people trained and using tools and problem solving methodologies. Nowadays the most used model is the Lean Manufacturing System based on TPS (Toyota Prodcution System).

To assure a succes in a CI process implemetation, you need a extremely consistent leadership following some steps and principles to implement a new culture that guides your organization every day and is owned by the operations people at all levels thruoghout the organization.

To implement both systems, you need to work with people in cultural and technical aspects and also you will need to invest time, which is a key factor, in this way you have to develop a very clear vision on what you want for your organization taking as a basis a long term philosophy.