Getting the order right

by Phil Cohen

Quality is about meeting customer needs - but how sure are you that your organisation always understands what the customer is asking for?

After all, there is no point in ensuring that product gets manufactured and delivered to the right customer at the right time, if you're not sure that it was the right product in the first place. It's vitally important to ensure that your organisation interprets the customer's order correctly, and that you are sure that you can actually deliver the product (or service) before committing to it.

The ISO 9001 quality assurance standard sets out a useful checklist of 'contract review' activities to ensure that customer orders are actually met accurately and reliably. If you are trying to improve the quality of your goods or services, following this checklist is useful. If you are trying to get certification to ISO 9001 or ISO 9002, following the checklist is essential.

The standard says first that there must be a written procedure for dealing with customer orders, contracts and tenders (the standard treats all these as being equivalent). The requirement for documentation is common to the other aspects of the standard, and with quality assurance principles in general: that a documented system is always more reliable, and easier to improve, than an informal one.

To ensure that the order is understood, it should be reviewed to make sure that it is well defined. The essence here is that a common understanding of the meaning of the order is required between you and your customer. If the order is written (as in the case of a tender), this review is part of the normal tender response process. If, however, an 'order' in your organisation is in the form of a phone call, or a conversation over a counter, then there needs to be a more reliable method for demonstrating a common understanding: perhaps a confirmatory fax sent by you to your customer, or a form completed by counter staff setting out the customer's requirements and signed by the customer.

The standard also states that if you decide to vary the terms of delivery from those on the order, you have to agree the changes with the customer. Another important requirement is that the order is reviewed to make sure that you can actually meet it. This might mean a check of stock levels, or of staff schedules.

Finally, the standard requires that copies of any changes to the contract after its acceptance should be sent to any other part of your organisation that needs to see them.

Applying this part of the standard to a conventional manufacturer or stockist organisation is fairly straightforward: but what does it mean in, say, a service organisation?

In a dentist's surgery, for example, what constitutes a contract between the supplier (the dentist) and the customer (the patient)? A dentist trying to gain certification to a quality assurance standard might have to fill out a form notifying the patient of the work that would be done (one X-ray, three fillings, agreed cost) and have the patient sign it. Any change in the requirements during the consultation would have to be discussed with the patient and their consent obtained.

A taxi cooperative implementing the standard would have to ensure before they committed to an order (in the form of a phone call ordering a taxi) that they could actually meet that order.

Contract review covers the first point of contact with the customer, and the first point in the process of meeting customer requirements.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is one of a series of articles written by Phil Cohen and Onno van Ewyk, HCi . Most of the articles were also published in the Australian Financial Review. This article may be reproduced only with the permission of HCi Consulting (email HCi ). Copyright HCi, 1993-1998.