Olena Abramova, Director, Personnel Certification Body of the Ukrainian Association for Quality, Ukraine

Transcription

1 The role of the EOQ Personnel Registration Scheme requirements in harmonization of Ukrainian business practices and problems of the quality training and personnel certification system Olena Abramova, Director, Personnel Certification Body of the Ukrainian Association for Quality, Ukraine Abstract Today Ukraine is the direct neighbor of the European Union. Our country is planning to become a member of the World Trade Organization as well. It requires Ukrainian specialists to become more mobile than ever and to move towards greater harmonization of business practices within European Union and beyond. There is a real demand for Ukrainian system of quality training and qualifications. This report presents some results of practical activities of the Ukrainian Association for Quality (UAQ) within the European Organization for Quality (EOQ). The UAQ is being the EOQ National Representative in Ukraine during some years. The UAQ collaborates with a number of training and educational organizations. The Personnel Certification Body of the UAQ (the UAQ PCB) conducts systematically the qualifying examinations according to the EOQ Personnel Registration Scheme requirements, approved by the European Commission. Application of international requirements shows the problems of education system. The international level specialists, registered in the EOQ, must know perfectly: the standards and management principles, the most widespread tools and quality management methods of modern business practices. The EOQ marks out required knowledge of standards and methods to the highest level C". It means that specialists of C-level should demonstrate: deep and clear understanding of the corresponding standards and methods; ability to expound the standard requirements correctly and to apply these requirements to concrete organization conditions; skills to analyze quickly the situations or the regulating documents with exact picking out main and identifying the appropriate standard requirements; ability to think logically, to find the weak organization points and possibilities for improvement. As the examination results show, there are several difficult topics for specialists trained on typical quality management training programs. Comment:?????-??????? The report contains information about results of quality personnel certification process and recommendations on the training program improvement useful for the organizations that are going to meet international requirements of the EOQ Harmonized Scheme for the Quality Personnel Registration/Certification. The conclusions and recommendations will be interesting for trainers and for training and educational organizations. Today Ukraine is the direct neighbor of the European Union. Our country is planning to become a member of the World Trade Organization as well. It requires Ukrainian specialists to become more mobile than ever and to move towards further harmonization of business practices within European Union and beyond. There is a real challenge for Ukrainian system of quality training and personnel certification system. Comment:?????-??????? During the last years the UAQ has been the EOQ National Representative of Ukraine and the partner of a number of Ukrainian and Russian training organizations. The UAQ Personnel Certification Body (the UAQ PCB) conducts regularly the qualification exams according to the EOQ Personnel Registration Scheme requirements approved by the European Commission. The European Organization for Quality's (the EOQ) point of view is that quality of European high education can be improved by striving for so called integrated excellence. This wide term includes several components. Designing of management education quality by educational programs, training plans and sets of disciplines which: 1. are harmonized with recognized international approaches; 2. include the best international practices;

2 3. are based on modern knowledge on successful methods and technologies; 4. integrate knowledge on different separate disciplines and provide systematic knowledge that are incorporated in the European Model of Business Excellence and international management standards and form the modern competency model for international- level professionals; 5. take into account specificity of national educational system; Developing of the set of evaluation examination methods; improving of evaluation testing reliability by optimal combination of variety of tests existing in world educational practice; Existing of the mature quality management system in educational organization. A management system is the mature one if it is developed according to the international standards, implemented, certified and improved by principles and approaches of the business excellence model; Competent trainers that work on the field of developing or auditing of real management systems and not only have deep theoretical knowledge, but are good in practical application of this theoretical knowledge as well. The EOQ Ukrainian National Agency s experience on personnel certification has exposed some problems of management education. The goals of the open discussion of these problems are to promote the development of quality, environmental and safety management educational programs, as well as to implement experience of national and international educational organizations into common educational practice. The results of personnel certification can be interesting for managers and trainers of educational organizations that train or plan to train the professional on quality and environmental management, occupational health and safety, food safety. According to the EOQ requirements, the general understanding of standards and methods is not enough for international- level specialist. The real specialist should be perfect in standard and principles of management, as well as in world-wide-spread and most used modern quality, environmental and safety management tools and methods. There are three knowledge levels in the EOQ qualification requirements -?,? and? [1]. The EOQ refer to the highest level C knowledge on applicable standards. It means that specialists should demonstrate: deep understanding of applicable standards and methods; ability to interpret and apply standards requirements for spec ific organizational circumstances; ability to analyze a specific situation or standards texts quickly, to identify the main problems and connect them exactly with the corresponding requirements of applicable standards; ability to think logically and to find organization s weaknesses and possibilities for improvement: skills to combine the different methods and to seek original ways of problem solving. Certified specialists, in particular certified managers, should have managerial skills because they influence significantly to success of common activities of personnel towards organizational goals. According to the EOQ requirements, creative thinking should combine with professional knowledge on specific field of activities as well as with knowledge on econo mics, policy, sociology and law. The UAQ PCB has assessed the conformity of training processes, programs and materials used by different educational organizations that are going to work in the EOQ scheme. The assessment results show that training programs of assessed educational organizations have initially a good basic component of high education, but as a whole they are poorly harmonized with international EOQ knowledge requirements. Comment:????????????????? Comment:???????? «????»

3 For example: There are training programs or lectures don t include all required topics. Some topics of the level B EOQ knowledge aren t supported by necessary applicable tools and methods. Some topics of the level C EOQ knowledge aren t supported by training on practical application of specific tools and interpretation of results. Besides, non- harmonized training programs are often sets of separate disciplines that are not linked with each other. It doesn t provide a deep understanding of connection of different tools and approaches with European Business Excellence Model and international management standards. There are not enough situation tasks and case analysis trainings, including tasks on practical implementation of international management standards as well as on application of the most widespread management tools. Also, trainers don t have necessary audit practice and practice on management systems development according international requirements. It may take about a couple of years from an educational organization to make its training program meeting all the EOQ requirements. The results of the EOQ examination, assessing levels of professionalism and universality, show there are some the most common mistakes. They include: vocabulary mistakes; weak skills of logical thinking based on ISO standards and applied with practical situation; insufficient knowledge on modern management tools; absence of audit practice. The vocabulary problems are caused by bad understanding of basic terms meaning; terms interpretation on Russian or Ukrainian; difference between terms in official publication of ISO standards on English and their national version on Russian and Ukrainian. Following terms are the problem ones: management, quality management system, control management system, control, validation of processes, approval of equipment, verification, quality plan, record, procedure, specification, customer. Correction, corrective and preventive actions, effectiveness and efficiency of management systems these terms also make the problems on the exams. The specialists that are trained according to typical quality, environmental and safety training programs have a problem with a number of test topics. These problem topics are shows that specialists are not ready for the professional activities. Not only personnel certification bodies, but also high basic educational organization, personnel training centers, post-graduate institutions should pay special attention to such problem topics. The most widespread problem topics are listed below. Analytical thinking on the basis of ISO standards of 9001:2000 series The one of the EOQ personnel requirement is the ability of quick identification of applicable ISO 9001:2000 requirements for some specific situation. In the real business specialists are often faced to complex problems that should be assessed according to several standard s clauses at the same time. In such cases high-skilled quality manager should be able to choose a set of linked standard s

4 requirement on the basis of complex view of existing problem. How such skills can be trained? The one of such training methods is the case analysis of special designed situations. Each case describes a specific business situation and some questions on this situation should be answered. Here is an example of such situation: The Best House company constructs a number of buildings in Ukraine and is going to participate in some foreign construction tender. One of the tender conditions is the quality management system. During the purchase process audit an auditor ask ed to show material purchasing orders and corresponding purchased material certificates. It was a spot check. The comparison of the order for sheet steel and the certificate of the last purchased lot shown that there was non-conformity on steel type. The BL (boiling) steel sheets of required thickness were purchased instead of the HK (half-killed steel) steel sheets ordered according to the design documentation. The ordered steel sheets are used for floor construction. The steel sheets on the store didn t have any parameter identification. Such steel type replacement was agreed neither with project institute, nor with the customer. Purchase Manager says it is less profitable to buy steel directly from a producer than from The Retail Metal intermediary company, because this intermediary company lets to buy small lots and provides expedition services. But at the moment of auditing purchase at the store of The Retail Metal intermediary company there were not any steel sheets matching exactly to The Best House company s order. The representative of The Retail Metal convinced Purchase Manager of The Best House that such replacement is not sufficient and even better. Purchase Manager of The Best House doesn t have a high education and entrusted completely with the representative of The Retail Metal company, their partner for many years. We recommend to those who want to became familiar, for example, with ISO 9001:2000 to study the case and find answer on following questions: 1) What standard requirements are applicable in this situation? 2) How standard requirements Customer-related Processes (7.2), approval of the processes and approval of equipment (7.5.2 a, b), Design and Development (7.3.), Customer Property (7.5.4.) can be applied in this situation? 3) What should be agreed with a customer and why? 4) How the process of agreeing with customer should be documented and recorded? In many situations these questions are very important for any organization. The contract decisions, market image and success of organization depend often from fast answer on these questions. So quality professionals should have experience, skills of logical thinking and standard understanding. On exams the UAQ PSB checks such skills by the tests developed on situation cases. These cases illustrate combination or interrelation of practical problems from different industrial scopes and cause different interpretation of management professionals. Our target is to teach specialists to answer on such question the same as world business leaders, international standards developers, leading professionals of well-known international certification bodies do it. Educational organizations striving to confirm with international requirements of the EOQ harmonized personnel certification scheme should include a big number of practical tasks with case analysis into their training programs. Any common course or diploma projects cannot replace completely such practical training. Educational organization should widely use business games and teamwork in their training programs.

5 Quality Management System. General Requirements The next topic recommended for practical classes is the requirements of clause 4.1 of ISO 9001:2000. It is well known that this clause requires an organization to manage defined processes according to ISO 9001:2000. Where an organization chooses to outsource any process that affects product conformity with requirements, the organization shall ensure control over such processes. Such processes can include management activities, provision of resources, product realization and measurements. In another words, if an organization has the network of service providers or subcontractors, there should be implemented some additional tools for control of their processes. Comment:???????????.?????? In international practice the second part audit is widespread (but not the only) type of subcontractor control. By such second part audit the organization controls conformity of its sub-contractor s quality management system to ISO 9001:2000 requirements. In Ukraine few organizations include into their management systems a possibility of such control of their sub -contractor as the second part audit. The difference between business principles and practice in our country and in foreign countries often makes our specialists to suppose incorrectly that any organization can not control the processes of external company. As a result, such specialists cannot identify correctly who should take responsibility in the specific contract situation from the test or real business practice. That s why it is necessary in training to take into account international business practice and to reach deep understanding of ISO 9001:2000 clause 4.1 requirements. Design and Development As usually, ISO 9001:2000 clause 7.3 Design and Development is very problematic for specialists for studying and correct understanding. Such problem arises usually in complex multisided contract situation, where there are main contractor and several sub -contract companies. It is often hard for specialists to give correct answers on the specific test case. Here are the examples of problematic questions: 1) What kind of organization can exclude requirements of 7.3 clause from its quality management system? Why? 2) Who is the owner of design and development process? 3) Can clause Customer Property be applied to the specific project in the described case? 4) What should be agreed with the customer? How should it be documented? It is better to pay more attention to these standard s clauses in training programs. Also it should be noted, there are several topics in description of each practical case and some of them are used for distraction of attention. So specialists are also examined for their ability to pick out the sufficient topics. The description of several topics combination lets examine the ability to prioritize problems when solving them in combination, the ability to abstract from the context when solving each separate problem, skills of identification the specific standard requirements that are applicable for described situation. In case study we are recommended to put questions that can help to clear agreement processes with design organization (7.3.7, ISO 9001:2000), identification and traceability (7.5.3, ISO 9001:2000), etc. Customer Property In business practice customer property may have many forms. It can be molds, specifications, drafts, confidential information, design documentation, component parts, raw materials, instruments and equipment, sites, etc. At the exam specialists often cannot identify correctly the customer property and connect the requirements with described test case. As the conclusion, the UAQ PCB would like the management training organization to pay their attention on following subjects: to harmonize their training programs with the EOQ requirements,

6 to improve their trainers qualification, to develop quality management system according to the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 and European Business Excellence Model, to improve practical training, to develop case studies for each clause of studying standard, to use examples and cases from real national and international business practice for practical application of studying tools. For organization of practical lessons we recommend to use teamwork moderation in the form of distributing of roles, preparing of teamwork results presentation, presenting by modern tools (for example, multimedia tools). We suppose, it is expedient to include training on conflict management and statistical thinking into practical classes. We recommend to improve trainers guidance for conducting of practical cases, including time planning and managing, criteria for cross-team evaluation and trainers evaluation, answer samples. With such training our specialists will be able to pass any exam of international level and Ukraine will be internationally recognized for its professionals. We believe, that correct accent on quality of education helps any country to solve successfully the problem of national competitiveness and security. 1 Knowledge levels in the EOQ qualification requirements according to the training program topics:? to understand and to be able to explain;? additionally to A to be able to choose applicable tools and to apply them;? additionally to? and? to be able to integrate applicable tools and to interpret results.