Developing ISO Standard by Hydra Trading LLC Research Paper

• Logistics Analyst: Roles include:

1. Evaluate all activities of logistic process
2. Make necessary recommendations for improvement

• Logistics Manager:

Roles are:

1. Providing efficient customer support service
2. Manage people and communicate with team
3. Monitor stock
4. Processing and packaging orders

• Supply Chain Manager:

Roles are:

1. Control all aspects of the supply chain, from start to the end
2. Provide customers with delivery deals and other services
3. Coordinate some elements of purchasing and warehouse
4. Provide administrative duties

• Identification of key processes (quality management processes for safe delivery of products and services)

1. Resources management
2. Procurement and purchasing design
3. Production
4. Customer relationship management
5. Internal audit systems
6. Management processes

• Identification of the company challenges

1. Flexibility: since recession, the company suffered financial setbacks, but it has responded with few innovative ideas for growth
2. Sustainability: the green movement present serious challenges to the firm. The company will have to invest in green technology and production to manage its operation for eco-friendly environment
3. Innovation: the company has not adopted mobile technology and other smart gadgets to facilitate transfer of information and reduce costs of running the business
4. Quality: the company strives to save costs but does little to improve quality
5. Capacity shortages: lack of reliable drivers and transporters, which have led to increase in costs and delay
6. Product damage: the company transport sensitive and dangerous cargo to the army. In some cases, accidents cause damages to such cargo. Packing should address effects of bumps, shock, and exposure
7. Security: bandits may target the cargo during transportation than any other time. There is a need for adequate security for the army cargo

• Conclusion:

The week’s activities have provided valuable lessons for understanding roles, key processes, and challenges of the company

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager

• Aim

1. The army requires the company to supply its cargo persistently and continually in their original conditions
2. Ensure that the firm meets its obligations

• Objectives for achieving effective delivery and customer satisfaction

1. Continual service improvement
2. Ensuring conformity with the customer’s demands
3. Meeting regulatory and security challenges

• The company lacks any quality standard guideline, hence, the need to introduce ISO standard
• Benefits of ISO

1. Increased efficiency: a company that has ISO standards has high-levels of efficiency
2. The processes are simple to follow once introduced. Therefore, training and planning for transition are simple steps
3. Increased revenue: a firm with ISO standard has efficient standards, improved productivity and financial management
4. High morale among employees: the ISO defines roles and responsibilities for all staff members, training, and accountability systems
5. ISO standard provides international recognition to the company
6. ISO standard has ability to gather sufficient data for factual decision-making
7. Improved relationship with customer because of ensuring customer’s standards during transportation
8. Documentation of all processes enhances identification of errors and discrepancies within the chain
9. Improve accountability and audit processes for effective decision-making

Conclusion
The company needs ISO standard in order to enhance operation, performance, and profitability.

• Gap analysis
• Management responsibilities

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager

• The need to understand quality management principles
• The company lacks any ISO standard, thus, will cannot make any comparison
• Gap analysis helps in identification of challenges and areas for improvement
• Quality management depends on the management team
• The top executives must:

1. Define quality policy for the company
2. Define measurable objectives to ensure that quality management strategies are possible
3. Ensure that employees achieve objectives by ensuring that the objectives align with the quality requirements
4. Provide communication channels for the process
5. Conduct quality management reviews in order to determine the impact of quality initiatives in the company
6. Management team must support the process with all required resources for effective implementation
7. Executives must ensure continuous review of the process based on the market pressure and emerging challenges

Gap analysis is necessary for understanding challenges and the roles of the management team in promoting quality improvement initiatives in the firm

• Developing the project plan

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager

• Quality improvement initiatives require a plan for effective implementation
• Reviewing challenges from the first week and outcomes of gap analysis and roles of management team
• Communicating with the team head of departments and managers
• Define the time frame for the project (12 weeks)
• The firm must select the type of registrar for its ISO standard
• Informing the employees of the quality management process
• Decision on key stakeholders, participants and period for the project after evaluation of the gap analysis findings
• Arranging for the ISO standard meeting
• Identification of roles and responsibilities of all participants
• Ensure that the project has adequate tools and support from all stakeholders
• Identification of external factors that may have impacts on the project, such as assistance, resources, and other project assistants
• Defining the project deadline

1. To reduce burden on resources
2. To provide for critical path that guides the project phases
3. Provide realistic estimates of amount of resources and time required to complete the project

• Conduct meeting for feedback purposes

Conclusion
The company shall rely on its personal assigned in these departments to facilitate the implementation of the process
The firm must implement its quality improvement project based on a written project plan
The process of developing a project plan is necessary in order to determine the work flow and resources needed for the project

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager
• Logistic analyst assistant
• Logistic manager assistant
• Supply chain manager assistant

• Developing objectives for implanting the quality improvement plan is mandatory for the success of the project
• The objectives must focus on eight core areas of quality management

1. Leadership
2. Focus on customer’s needs
3. Engaging employees
4. Creating a process of quality improvement
5. Continual improvement
6. Decision-making processes based on facts
7. Beneficial relationship with suppliers and other external partners
8. Systematic management approach

NOTE: the objectives and quality plan must stress:

1. Roles and responsibilities in key areas in the plan
2. Develop objectives based on the prevailing market conditions and customer needs
3. Highlight the need to meet customer’s needs
4. Developing methods of communicating to employees and other assistants, if any
5. Highlighting relationship among all key phases of the project

Conclusion: the team and the objectives that focus on eight key areas of quality improvement shall ensure that the project addresses key concerns in the company

• Implementation of the plan: The use of the team approach
• The team approach has two groups (steering team and task team)
• The company adopts the new procedure for ISO standard

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager
• Logistic analyst assistant
• Logistic manager assistant
• Supply chain manager assistant

• This is a team of six people
• The team shall lead the quality improvement plan
• The team’s core roles include meeting to discuss project progress, resolve emerging challenges, review and allocate available resources, and coordinate the design of the new quality management system
• The team has key people in the company with management and administrative roles in supply chain , logistic, and analysis
• The choice of the team is strategic for the authority the project requires for decision-making
• Steering team has the responsibility of leading the project
• The task team formulates all processes and document requirements for the plan
• The steering team reviews, monitor, and make changes to proposals of the task team
• The task team must determine the requirements and procedures for developing quality management systems
• The task team must evaluate the requirements for improving quality and the current organisational practices
• The steering team must develop the project period and assign specific tasks to the team
• Task team designs the new approach to allow the company meet ISO standard benchmarks
• The ISO standard steering team must review the process for approval or modification. After approval, the team introduces the new procedures to employees
• The company adopts the new system in order to improve quality

Conclusion: The team approach is effective because it accounts for effective decision-making, allocation of resources, leadership involvement, collaborative approach, and thorough review of the approved procedures. Hence, it ensures that the project focuses on key objectives of the quality improvement plan

• Implementation (a step-by-step approach)
• Assign specific dates to all objectives (the project uses Gantt Chart)

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager

• Identify members of the team, including senior executives
• Identify employees who will take specific tasks
• Determining workload and availability of resources

Implementation agenda

• Inform the team
• Assignment of tasks to specific employees or as a team
• Reviewing responsibilities assigned to individuals in order to ensure balance
• Identification of a task team leader to facilitate the process and promote communication
• Team leader takes the responsibility for the task
• Identify adequate resources for the project
• Identify the need for training or assistance among team members

Use Gantt Chart to assign project specific dates

• The plan relies on information from the planned objectives and
• Allocate dates based on availability of resources
• Identify tasks preferred tasks
• Identify management responsibilities
• Note the amount of time required for successful completion of the task

Conclusion
The Gantt chart is necessary for indicating the projects and their milestone. It will allow the team to know projects, which are not on schedule

• Training

ISO standard requires that all employees undergo training in order to understand their functions in relations to quality improvement initiatives

• Training project managers and team leaders in order to ensure effective implementation of the project
• Training employees to understand ISO standard and its importance to the company, how it will affect their roles, improve quality, and opportunities the ISO standard provides
• The team must understand all details of the project in order to perform their duties well
• Internal auditors need training on ISO standards

Training is also necessary in introducing employees in technical areas of the project in order to reduce cases of errors
In case of any challenge, the team should perform root cause analysis in order to identify the source of the error
Conclusion
Training is mandatory for successful implementation of the project because project implementation faces a number of challenges, which may lead to its collapse
All employees in the organisation must understand the importance of ISO standard to the company and support its implementation

• Documentation

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager
• Logistic analyst assistant
• Logistic manager assistant
• Supply chain manager assistant

• Most documentation requirements are general, but the team must identify processes that can support the project
• Identification of documentation processes

1. Outline an overall view e.g., an entire department
2. Identify specific areas like, supply chain, purchasing, warehousing, distribution, customer service, tracking systems, quality control, receiving, product control, and other services
3. Identify how these process affect one another, a flow diagram may be appropriate for explanation

• Management in the department should provide details of their operation management. This must contain all processes that affect logistic services to the military
• Documentation Requirements

1. It is important to identify documents, which are relevant to the company quality management system
2. Identify processes that require documentation
3. Use guidelines for future identification of documents
4. Management team must take part in this process
5. After the project implementation, documentation and their identification processes must form the new part of quality control in the company

• Quality manual processes

1. There are ISO standard firms that offer quality manual procedures. They save costs and time

• Controlling documents and records

1. The company must implement and strict method of controlling all documents and records
2. The steering committee must assign documents to specific team or individual

• Types of documents to control

1. Define the document e.g., guides, diagrams, illustrations, presentation materials, manuals, and work processes among others
2. The document may include any shared materials, communicated information, correspondences, sharing knowledge, and any document that serves the purpose of quality improvement for the company
3. Document approvals
   1. Only approved document are suitable for use. This is to prevent the use of wrong information or limit abuse of information.
   2. More than one department or individual may approve a document.
4. Document update
   1. Should ensure that only updated version of the document is available for references
   2. Create a way of identifying old versions
   3. Define what to do with old versions of documents
   4. Highlight the date of update, reasons for the update, the person responsible for the update, and function that is relevant to the update
   5. Deploy automated system to replace manual management of documents
5. Identification of documents
   1. The company must identify its documents
   2. The ISO standard requires that a firm should have a way of identifying its documents, which may include numbering, location, and naming of the document among others
   3. Employees should know where to find documents or information
6. Removal of documents
   1. Any employee who removes a document must state its purpose and the party responsible
   2. There must be a document backup

Conclusion
The ISO standard requires the firm to protect its documents by all methods possible as a way of protecting quality management system

• Use and Continual Improvement
• Design and development

• Putting the quality management system into action comes after completing design and documentation
• All employees must participate in the process by following documented procedures
• The team must understand what changes have taken place after the implementation of the quality improvement procedures
• All employees must collect data in their departments about changes in procedures
• The firm must base its decision on data collected and analysed
• The process must address:

1. Customer’s satisfaction
2. Reduce cases of damaged cargo
3. Reduce customer’s complaints

• The firm must initiate improvement plan for improvement plants, which failed to achieve the intended objectives
• Senior managers must initiate the improvement plan
• The decision should address:

1. Adoption of flexible processes
2. Enhance innovation or upgrade the system
3. Respond to green movements
4. Address customer’s concerns
5. Security challenges

• This is also task management, which must offer the right tools for improving the system, responsible employees, period, and resources required
• The roles of senior executives are paramount for the success of this project
• Every team must get results for a task or sub-task assigned

The ISO standard is keen on design and development process because this is where the firm may fail

1. The firm shall adopt a simple method based on identification, implementation, and following the outcomes
2. The method shall eliminate risks and ensure that the project meets required standards

Conclusion
Some processes may be new to the firm or have undergone change. Therefore, the firm will find it necessary to improve them
Internal audits are necessary during these stages

• Resource management
• Customer satisfaction and or service

• The ISO standard recommends that a firm should management all its resources, infrastructure, and workplace, which facilitate achievement of quality improvement standards
• The company must account for all its resources
• Both infrastructure and a suitable working environment provide optimal conditions for the realisation of the project objectives
• The firm must account for all resources and services that support realisation of the project objectives, which include transportation services, communication channels, warehouse and distribution among others

Communication with customers

• Communication with customers is crucial for the company
• The ISO standard has conditions for communicating with customers
• The firm must define what information to relay to the customer:

1. Information about services
2. Information regarding enquiries, transportation status, delivery status
3. Information about customer’s complaints about qualities of the delivered products, storage, and security of the cargo during transportation

Method of relaying information to the customer

• The organisation deals with security cargo and confidential information about the army. Therefore, its channels of communication must be secure
• The firm should provide specific contact person to handle army’s enquiries
• The firm should determine the appropriate method of handling complaints by providing effective corrective action

Conclusion
The firm must maintain its resources and provide effective and secure communication channels with army

• Control purchasing

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager
• Procurement department

• The firm must evaluate and control the purchase system
• The firm must work with suppliers who can meet its standards and have ability to supply

The parameter for a suitable supplier should include the following:

• Schedule of delivery
• Meeting customer’s demands
• Innovation and use of technology to facilitate logistic services
• Credibility of the firm is necessary because of the nature of cargo under delivery, and the firm should deliver the cargo without challenges
• The suppliers’ financial strength
• The firm should be available to transport the cargo where the army needs them e.g., in training camps and warehouses

The ISO standards requires the firm to document all purchasing activities

• The firm must define the purchasing process
• The process must note all the product characteristics
• The firm must establish a cargo control quality before making the delivery to the army
• The management team must have sufficient knowledge or receive training in purchasing control systems
• There should only approved dealers, transporters, and suppliers for the firm

Conclusion
The purchasing control system aims to establish and define external relations, legal requirements, standards, and customers’ needs

• Control of Nonconforming Product, Services, and Operation

• All employees must engage in identification of nonconforming products and services
• Non-conforming products include

1. Services and products that fail to meet the specified requirements
2. Organisational processes that do not meet the industry practices and regulation requirements

• The firm must review transportation systems, transportation facilities, security issues, environmental compliance, communication channels, and legal requirements of delivering army cargo
• The ISO standard requires a firm to identify all non-conforming products and services
• The aim is to control their usages, transportation to customers, and or mixing with other services and products
• The processes of identifying all non-conforming services and products require documentation
• The process must include methods and people responsible for identification of non-conforming products and services
• The method must provide a clear process of handling any detected non-conforming products and services
• The firm cannot ignore the procedure because it is a mandatory process in establishing an ISO standard
• The firm must identify people who must be responsible for the identification of non-conforming products and services
• The responsible team must review all stages of identifying non-conforming products or services
• The process is a part quality management procedures, which a firm must document in its list of controlled procedures
• The firm must identify the necessary action for non-conforming services and products such as:

1. Elimination of such products and services
2. Notifying the customers about changes
3. Notify all relevant bodies both internal and external parties
4. Implement corrective measures

Conclusion
The firm must eliminate all non-conforming services and product because such services and products reduce quality standards
All services and products must meet regulatory requirements, customer’s specifications, and intended outcomes

• Internal audit

• Logistic analyst
• Logistic manager
• Supply chain manager

• The firm must assess effectiveness, conformity and locate opportunities for improving its quality improvement project
• It will help the firm to prepare for the subsequent external audit
• The firm must compare all processes against requirements of the ISO standard
• The firm must establish an internal audit team to conduct the audit requirements
• An internal audit must establish the effectiveness of the new system
• Internal audit is necessary as a way of preparing for Registration Audit
• The firm must conduct an internal audit two months prior to the Registration Audit
• An internal audit must be within the time frame in order to conform to ISO standards and meet the company’s quality improvement standards

Qualities of the internal audit team

1. Honesty, credibility, and integrity as part of the ethics requirement
2. Diplomatic
3. Decisive
4. Independent
5. Open-minded
6. Versatile

The audit program must account for the following

• Quality standards for services and products of the firm
• Account for ISO standard benchmarks
• Evaluate processes and procedures of the company logistic services and products
• The audit must review whether the firm has achieved its quality needs

Audit findings

• Show departments audited
• Employees who participated in the audit
• Reference to previous audit results, if any
• Presentation of audit findings based on the evidences
• Audit recommendations
• All non-conforming processes, procedures, products, and services
• The audit is necessary to improve the quality management system

• Ready for ISO registration

• All employees

• The firm must identify a registrar
• This is a long-term relationship (three years)
• The aim is to review the firm’s quality management system against the ISO standards

The company must prepare all employees for the registration audit

• Employees must the date of the audit and its purpose
• The process aims at preparing employees for the audit processes
• The auditor looks for signs of compliance among employees
• Employees should be familiar with the quality management processes and procedures

Preparing facilities for audit

• All facilities must be neat and void of any non-conformity
• Every facility must have its supporting document
• All documents, materials, and any other facilities must be in the right place

Preparing for the registration auditor

• The firm must provide a copy of the quality management system to the auditor
• The team must have an area in which it will evaluate the findings

Conclusion
The firm is ready for the audit registration