October is National Quality Month!

TREAT YOURSELF!  October is National Quality Month in the United States and November is World Quality Month across the globe!

Now is the time to celebrate quality by engaging with your entire team about the importance of quality as a core business value.  A robust quality system and processes is essential in order to delight your customers and keep them coming back.  Superior quality = superior market advantage.

Here are some suggested ways to celebrate!

1.  Quiz yourself and your team - what does quality mean in your own words?

2.  Reinvigorate your quality initiative by refreshing your quality policy communication.  Offer it up as a discussion topic - does everyone remember it?  does everyone understand it?  does everyone know their role in maintaining it?  Is it still relevant and integral to your business?

3.  Spotlight your quality system and processes as the priority area for continuous improvement ideas this month.

4.  Put a taskforce on your quality metrics and confirm the data is correct, the right things are being tracked, performance is trending in the right direction.  HIghlight and celebrate your success (or make adjustments if necessary).

5.  Celebrate a successful problem solving team.  Remind everyone of the importance of great problem solving techniques and honest and deliberate treatment of problems.  Problems are the greatest opportunity toward finding your path and reaching excellence.  

6.  Reinvigorate your team and your internal audit group.  Remind them of the importance of their work and finding areas for improvement to the continued success of your business.

7.  Host a town hall (perhaps with lunch!?) to discuss some great ideas that have been mentioned but not yet undertaken.  Launch a new project or two.

8.  Revisit a finished lean project or kaizen event.  Where you were already successful, can you make even more improvement?

If your business uses an ISO9001 based quality system, here's a very special offer.  Consider "treating yourself" or your staff to this useful online video series.  It's a handy, easy to navigate series all about translating the complicated language of ISO9001 into easy to understand Plain English.  Each video averages just 15 minutes, so you can quickly find and focus on the specific clause you're looking for.  With a total of 6 hours of content for the whole series, this is a great resource for people who are new to the standard, internal auditors who may not deal with the standard every day, or managers and executives who want a quick reference or refresher.  

And to celebrate National Quality Month, this very special offer gives you unlimited access for just $179.  Subscribe today (and subscribe your team members) and let's start celebrating!