A Web-Based Application to Support Quality Management Documentation System for a Construction Company

Since the emergence of ISO 9000 standards in 1987, it has been widely known and accepted by various organizations, mainly because ISO 9000 provides clearly documentation and systematic procedures and instruction that can be followed by everyone in organizations. Therefore, the most important benefit is a better management control on entirely organization system, greater awareness of procedural problems and promotion value (Tsim et al., 2002).

Although organizations already certified ISO 9000, documentations are still obvious in its difficulty. Since the concept of ISO 9000 focuses on the continual improvement of the system, some documentation need to be accurately and regularly revised and globally updated whenever changes are released. The major problem can usually be found in the companies where several site works in a various distance space are in operation. Sometime employees follow the “right” procedure from a “wrong” revision that can lead to inefficiency of Quality Management System within organization.

Organizations have should realized the importance of ISO 9000 standards, particularly in Quality System Documentation. The quality plan, another type of the Quality System Documentation is also very important for productivity of construction organizations. The quality plan is established to meet each project requirement. It may consist of several documentations including some parts of quality manuals and procedures, contract requirement, and specifically project procedures and work instruction.

By using Web-based technology, the organization can ensure that all employees can instantly access, validate, and retrieve all documentations. Moreover, the traceability of document can be easily implemented. This, of course, will certainly result in paperless work flow, faster exchange of information, and better documentary control.

Mr. Noppadol Kaewborisut made a study aimed to develop a Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) application for supporting Quality Management System within construction organizations. The output of his study will enhance and facilitate organization to manage documentation more efficiently and also enhance the accessibility and speed in handling with entire Quality System Documentation. In order to achieve his main objective, sub objectives were defined as follows:

1. To investigate and study the mechanism of Quality Management System, ISO 9000 standard, in Construction Companies.
2. To develop a framework of Quality Management Documentation System.
3. To develop the prototype of Quality Management Documentation System for supporting Construction Company’s ISO 9000 operational processes.

Conclusion

The study has proved that the Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is a development tool to support operational processes of ISO 9000 standard, especially in a construction company. It is the process specially designed to deal with all documentation management in the organization like the one in the construction company which faces with complicated lines of procedures containing a lot of documentation, and concerning with different parties and activities. Therefore, the details of the study has gone into dept verification which resulted in the conclusion that the QMDS application can be an effective tool for a Construction Company to meet with the increasing demand of world market competition both in quality and quantify of productivity.

1. Quality Management System, ISO 9000 Standards, in Construction Companies

The standards of ISO 9000 are written a manual guideline for a general purpose rather than for any particular business. They interpret, to some extent, what sorts of accomplishment rather than specify how things must be done. It is, therefore, to be cited here that, the ISO 9000 standards are varied in their nature and details from each Construction Company to another. This is because Construction Companies are different in specific types of documentations, management performance, organizational culture and levels of employees’ educational background but on the same basis, the ISO 9000 standards should definitely provide three procedure modules as minimum requirements such as follows:

a. Documenting procedure is the major operation of ISO 9000 within scope of this thesis. This procedure deals effectively with all types of the Quality System Documentation generated from the head office and the project site. These documentations specify the authorization with qualified employee to manipulate which only specific qualified employee can manipulate (create, update, validate) with. The authorization in the Construction Company, therefore are set to look after their type of documentation already specified. The Quality team is responsible for a Quality Manual which provides the whole picture of the Quality Management System of a company. Department managers should be responsible for the Quality Procedure and Work Instruction, the content of which is related to their work. For a Quality Plan, it is established in order to reach the project objectives that construction department have be full responsibility to deal with. In addition, standard forms and records, which can generate from any activities, are also considered as Quality System Documentation and need to be organized properly.

b. In the ISO 9000 standard, an auditing procedure is also required. Its purpose is to inspect a Quality System whether the established documentations are effective and employees conform to such documentation. There are two types of audits: an internal audit and an external audit. An internal audit requires qualified employees to perform as an auditor to audit across different department in a specific period of time. They should have some basic knowledge on departmental operation so that they can use their expertise in bringing out the accurate and reliable inspection. The frequency of internal audit depends on how many problems at that department or direct requests from specific department are. However, they should perform their function at least twice a year for internal audit. Regarding the external audit, it is generally hire from the third party by the company. This third party must have qualification and experience in auditing according to the minimum requirement of ISO 9000 standard. The frequency of external audit also holds at least twice a year. After finishing the audit in each period, the audit reports are submitted to the authority incidental to the contents of the report. Such reports are reviewed for final and make a decision whether the established documentations need to be adjusted accordingly.

c. Measuring procedure purposes to verify the Quality System of a company whether specific operational processes, equipments, or activities can perform at acceptable level or according to established objective. Each employee can acknowledge from his/her occupied documentation that measurement of activities or equipment will be carried out as defined in initially in the documentation. For example, project team has to check whether materials from supplier are correct to theirs specification. The results of measurements are collected as records and have to be kept properly.

2. A Framework of Quality Management Documentation System

After accomplishing the first objective, the overall information (both from literature review and company investigation) are analyzed and conceptually put into the framework of QMDS application. Such framework demonstrates the relationship among essential parts of effective development in the system. There are three main parts of QMDS application such as:

a. The document database refers to electronic files of documentation that are stored systematically in a document center by a file system. There are various types of Quality System Documentation in the electronic files of QMDS application such as Quality Manual, Quality Procedure, Work Instruction, Quality Plan, Standard Form and Document Template. All of these files use Relational Database Management System, being classified by type of documentation and stored in separated tables. Some tables have their inter-relationship as referred by unique keys. The document database is vital. It can indicate the efficient or inefficient result of the running system.

b. The security system is introduced in the QMDS application to secure all documentation stored in database by allowing authorized users to access and operate therein. Security system is vital part for QMDS application due to all documentation stores at server side. QMDS application has set two levels of security system. The first level checks authorization at the first time when users access to the system. They must input accurate username and password for access. The second level then checks authorization of users whenever they want to access to each Web pages. Users can manipulate (review, insert, update, validate, discussion room, and mailing list) with documentation based on their authorization which defined initially by the authority. This security system must be ensured that QMDS application is reliable and can be adopted safely.

c. Document functions refer to all functions of QMDS application. These functions are aimed to support ISO 9000 operational processes which can be divided into three groups: Document Manipulation, Document Distribution, and Document Discussion and Survey. Document Manipulation is designed on the criteria relate to all functions originated form documentation such as searching, reviewing, downloading/uploading, inserting, updating, and validating. The Document Distribution is focused on how to distribute effectively available documentation to relevant employees. Finally, Document Discussion and Survey enhances users to express their opinion by submitting the feedback and discussion. Moreover, poll is used to survey user’s opinion on how such documentation is working efficiently.

3. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) for Supporting a Construction Company’s ISO 9000 Operational Processes

For the processes to develop QMDS application, the traditional approach of the system development is adopted. Because of there are some environmental restriction and limitation hidden behind such as the involvement of users, time constraint, and natural operation of Quality System Management, the QMDS application, therefore develops new processes which need to be carried out starting from System Requirement Identification, System Design and Development to System Testing.

System Requirement Identification

This is the initial phase in the development of the system. It consists of two steps for implementation: Requirement Acquisition and Requirement Analysis. The Requirement Acquisition purposes to investigate the overview of ISO 9000 standard in order to identify the frequent problems and significant areas. The semi-structure interview is introduced towards respondents of Construction Companies to acquire their information about the operational processes of ISO 9000 standard. This useful information then served as the input to Requirement Analysis. This step defined the main objective of QMDS application by focusing on the document procedure of ISO 9000 operational processes. Such objective is the systematic management of documentation which can reduce valuable resource use.

System Design

The System Design describes how to design the whole system of QMDS application in order to reach the main objectives of the application. The design has been in-depth classified for the studied into three: Information Requirement and Design, Technology Requirement, and Structure Design.

System Development

This phase, System Development, is carried out with the designed system accordingly. It starts from the creation of database processes in order to support the other functions as well. MySQL is the application in the development of the database at the server side. This database can interact directly with overall functions by using HTML, PHP script and SQL command. Moreover, Java script is also adopted to program some complicated functions. These programming languages are programmed together in the Web page which concerns the compatibility and effective functions.
Other approaches in the System Development are Security system and user interface. PHP provides the function “session” that can be applied to define the authorizations of users. This can protect the unauthorized users to access and get confidential information of the company. For user interface, HTML provides various tags and attributes for developing the structure of Web page and linked menu powerfully. The Internet technology gives advantage to click and link quickly and easily to whatever Web pages. The overall Web programming languages now are developed to succeed and make successfully the prototype of QMDS application.

System Testing

The system testing is the approach for the uses to examining the accomplishment of the developed prototype. The application is tested by using the concept of the System Verification and the System Validation. First concept wants to check an effective function performance. Each function is tested step by step at the actual remote server. Moreover, the feasibilities of malfunctions are also tested to some functions so that any errors behind are corrected immediately. The second concept tests the usefulness of QMDS application in order to support the actual ISO 9000 operational processes. The practitioners of Construction Companies are interviewed to suggest/recommend on the application and the feasible improvement. For this study, the result of interviewing indicates that the developed prototype of QMDS application is useful and can support document procedure of ISO 9000 standard at acceptable level.

His thesis abstract is copied and posted.

Abstract

Construction companies must sustain and grow in a competitive market. Companies consider a better business processes to ensure that employees have adequate information to carry out their work. One of many methods can be used to ensure the consistency of business process is Quality Management System. Quality System Standard, ISO 9000, is set up to control the processes and operations which influence to the quality of product. The major requirement of ISO 9000 needs the company to establish Quality System Documentation that refers to all information in each business process. When the documentations are properly managed, they will be improved the Quality System which lead to increased quality of product, company image, and customer satisfaction.

This study uses Web-based approach for managing Quality System Documentations. Quality Management Documentation System (QMDS) is introduced in order to support ISO 9000 operational processes, particularly in document procedure. MySQL and PHP are adopted to develop the system. The benefits from this application provide all users to access and deal with the documentations regardless of time or distance space, reduction of time used in manual operation, and an increased efficiency of document management.