Quality Objectives

How are quality objectives defined under ISO 9001:2015?
How can companies implement quality objectives?
What are some common questions companies have about implementing quality objectives?

What are Quality Objectives?

Quality objectives are precisely measurable quality management goals that make it possible for organizations to:

objectively and definitively determine whether or not they are achieving their goals and meeting their requirements
fine-tune their action plans for meeting those goals and requirements by defining exactly what the plan must achieve

To understand why ISO 9001 requires quality objectives and why they are crucial to quality management and continual improvement, consider a diabetic who wants to improve his health and who makes a new year’s resolution to “lose weight.” How much weight does he need to lose, and how does he plan to achieve that weight loss? If he doesn’t set a target weight, he can declare success after losing only a couple of pounds – a situation that most likely will not motivate him to put much effort into following a diet and exercise plan or improve his health.

If the diabetic sincerely wants to be healthier, he could resolve to “lose 20 pounds in three months.” He now has a specific, countable weight loss target, and can make a plan to meet it, such as “Exercise 30 minutes five days per week and cut back daily caloric intake from 2,600 to 1,800 calories per day.” Transforming the resolution into a weight loss objective makes success more likely. Furthermore, if he loses only three pounds by the first of April, he will know that his plan is insufficient and can either exercise more and eat fewer calories or, if that is not possible, set a more realistic, achievable target.

A quality policy – an organization’s mission statement – is no different. A quality policy that lacks measurable goals is merely an intangible, idealized vision for the future. The presence of quality objectives transforms the policy into a tool for driving an organization’s overall success and compliance with the requirements of its quality management system.

Quality objectives are the “teeth” on the cogs of a quality management system “machine;” one can design a proof-of-concept model of such a machine with toothless cogs, but it will not actually carry out its intended function, nor can the machine’s designer test it to check that the design actually works.

ISO 9001’s Quality Objective Requirements

Quality objectives derive from and incorporate the broader business concept of key performance indicators, but they are otherwise unique to the ISO 9001 standard. ISO 9001 stipulates that organizations must set quality objectives that are:

in accordance with and supportive of the quality policy
based on performance indicators that can be measured precisely
relevant to improving customer satisfaction
designed to help the organization meet the requirements of its quality management system
monitored and updated as needed
made common knowledge throughout the entire organization

ISO 9001:2015 clause 6.2.2 replaces clause 5.4.1 of the 2008 standard. This update adds requirements for organizations to plan their quality objectives and the procedures for meeting them by:

setting objectives for all relevant processes
designing action plans for meeting them
delegating resources and responsibility for meeting them
setting timelines for meeting them
devising methods for evaluating whether they have been successfully met

On top of the explicit new requirements listed above, ISO 9001:2015 clause 5.2.1 – “Developing the Quality Policy” – implicitly requires you to build quality objectives that address your organization’s strategic direction and its goals. Because quality objectives must be consistent with your quality policy, which in turn must support your strategic direction, it follows that your quality objectives will necessarily address the strategic direction, with the quality policy serving as a bridge between them.

Finally, the 2015 revision removes the previous version’s stipulation that quality objectives only apply “within the organization”. The change reflects the fact that quality issues outside of your organization – with suppliers, for instance – can impact the quality of your products and services. Therefore, you may need to apply additional quality objectives to your external parties’ processes, products, and services.

Implementation Tips

Be smart! S.M.A.R.T is an acronym that boils ISO 9001 quality objective requirements down into five broad traits that all quality objectives should exhibit. Quality objectives should be:

Specific: Define goals precisely to lay the foundation for building effective plans to achieve them.
Measurable: Goals must be tied to “countable” performance indicators.

Achievable: Goals need to be realistic given the limitations of available resources.
Relevant: Don’t just dump goals into your quality policy to satisfy ISO 9001 requirements. make quality objectives that actually promote quality and success.
Time-bound: Attach deadlines to your objectives

In an Audit

To prepare for an ISO 9001 compliance audit, whether internal or for certification, scrutinize your quality objectives to make sure they are adequate. In particular, compare them to each of the quality objective requirements set forth by the ISO 9001 standard and make sure you are actually able to explain how each objective satisfies each requirement. It is equally important to be able to describe how your quality objectives are consistent with and facilitate the implementation of your quality policy.

Also record and maintain detailed documentation of this and all information related to your quality objectives, especially:

the quality objectives themselves
justifications for why they were chosen
measurements of each objective’s performance indicator and whether they meet their targets
the source of each failure, backed up with detailed evidence, as determined by their root cause analyses.

Common Questions about Quality Objectives

How can you make quality objectives relevant to your organization’s strategic direction?

Quality objectives apply to your strategic direction and quality policy in much the same way as to your quality management system. Just as the quality management system defines “goals” for meeting requirements, your strategic direction enumerates the broader goals of the organization. Quality objectives explicitly define what must happen for all of these goals to be considered “achieved”. In short, creating quality objectives that take your strategic direction into account is a matter of setting targets that transform your organization’s goals into measurable quantities.

For example, an organization providing janitorial services in the healthcare industry might write a quality policy pledging:

“…to support and improve healthcare facilities by providing exceptional custodial services characterized by unrivaled customer service and the highest safety and sanitation standards in the industry.”

Providing “unrivaled customer service” and maintaining “the highest safety and sanitation standards in the industry” are the goals of the strategic direction. For it to be possible to evaluate whether the business is meeting these ambitions, they need to be “processed” into measurable quality objectives such as:

Achieve a customer satisfaction rate of 95% or better as measured by customer surveys within six months
Receive fewer than ten official customer complaints annually
Reduce the reported number of annual accidents and injuries among personnel to zero

How do you make sure your quality objectives are measurable?

Measurable quality objectives are based on performance indicators or “countable” variables that reveal an organization’s success in meeting its objectives. A measurable quality objective simply ties together a quality goal (such as “reduce production costs”) to a performance indicator (total annual cost of labor) and a number signifying the minimum or maximum value that the performance indicator must reach in order for the objective to be considered to have been met.

What should you do if you fail to meet a quality objective?

Start with a root cause analysis. Document in detail which objective your organization failed to meet, who is involved in satisfying the objective, and the measured value of the objective’s performance indicator. Analysis of this information will help you figure out why your organization failed to achieve the objective. During the analysis, consider whether the relevant processes have adequate resources to reach the objective’s target and either delegate more resources or adjust the performance indicator target as needed.

Additionally, make sure to assign responsibilities that take full advantage of the strengths of each individual involved in reaching the goal. Doing so improves the overall effectiveness of the relevant process and the likelihood that your organization will meet the goal in the future.