5.10 Level of Detail in Practice

In our review of over 100 manuals, we have found a tendency to avoid detail in the quality policy statement based on the belief that the manual should be of a certain size, with the result essentially being to throw out the baby with the bath water ^[20].

The inappropriateness of this belief in a specific length (size) is self evident when you consider that ISO 9000 manuals are written for organizations with from two to 10,000 employees. In a very large company, the organization chart appendix alone can be half as long as the manual for a company with eight employees.

Often, the policies end up in the procedural documents, so there is an awareness that the information is required, but there is also an issue of where it belongs. Sometimes, the quality policy statements appear nowhere, much to the chagrin of the ISO 9000 management representative who searches with great gusto and futility to prove the existence of a response that was believed to be too complex to place in the manual.

Sometimes they even end up in a work instruction or on a form. In fact, the concept of clearly written, informative, prescriptive, quality policy statement remains a fuzzy issue to this date. Practitioners still promote the idea that the manual can be written in a few days by merely paraphrasing the Standard ^[21].

5.10.1 Summary of Quality Policy Statement Attributes

In summary, we maintain that a quality policy statement should be as follows:

A prescriptive response to every SHALL in the Standard;
Present tense as opposed to future tense;
Clearly expressed in simple declarative prose;
Not paraphrased;
Of whatever length and detail is necessary to define the organization's rules and methods.

We conclude that the level of detail in a quality policy statement should be whatever the SHALL demands in context with the methods used by the organization. Short policy statements are not necessarily effective and are often inappropriate.

5.10.2 Electronic Media Solutions

Fortunately, the advent of relatively low-cost electronically linked software is now available for document control for even small companies with small budgets. As a result, we would like to show some typical ways in which QMS designers have moved the suggested four-tier system onto electronic media via both internet and intranet information transfer systems.

Figure 4.5 illustrated how the cover sheet of the manual can be used as a central dispersion sheet for the entire QMS documentation. By opening up the QMS documentation via an icon that goes directly to the manual, each user can decide just how deep into the system they wish to go based on their expertise in navigating the various linkages. Those who are unfamiliar with the linkage would begin with the policy sections and those who know where they want to go will directly use the appropriate lower tier links.

For those who wish to search through the manual, there are links available on the table of contents pages so that the reader can link directly to any specific policy or process required. Once there, they are provided links to the next lowest tier. The internal book links were illustrated in Figure 4.6.

For example, we note that the text in the manual tends to be time-independent. These are statements of policy—rules of the house, methods, tools of use—that generally do not imply movement or process.

By contrast, the text in the lower level documents are time-dependent statements. The text in such documents generally imply or reference process or procedure as movement (e.g., from corporate to division, from division to division, from department to department, from operator to operator, or from operator step to operator step).

In the far right column of the table of contents, we also see comments that tell us how to deal with document content. As a result, if policy is presented in the manual, it need not be restated in the procedures. This is a common problem and policy shows up all over the several layers of documentation. Redundancy is to be avoided to minimize the number of documents that you will need to change when revisions occur, and they do occur frequently.

^[20]The controversy on quality manual design appears to have reached a level of concern sufficient to cause publications on the subject (e.g., Balano, Richard, "How to Avoid Creating the Dreaded 'Big Honkin' Binder," Quality Progress, March 1997, p. 152; and some years later, Wright, Tony, "ISO 9001 Without Tears," Quality Progress, August 2001, p. 57.

^[21]See, for example, Wright, Tony, "ISO 9001 Without Tears," Quality Progress, August 2001, p. 57.