[bản tiếng anh] LY THUYET VA UNG DUNG CUA QUAN LY TRI THUC HO TRO HE THONG CHAT LUONG

Theory and practice of knowledge

managed ISO 9001:2000

supported quality system

V. Mohan Sivakumar

Mechanical Engineering Department, PSG Polytechnic College,

Coimbatore, India

S.R. Devadasan

Production Engineering Department, PSG College of Technology,

Coimbatore, India, and

R. Murugesh

Darshan Institute of Engineering and Technology, Rajkot, India

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to initiate researches in the direction of integrating knowledge

management (KM) principles with ISO 9001:2008 Supported Quality System and motivate the

practitioners to implement such integrated system in real-time practice.

Design/methodology/approach – The principles of KM were integrated with the five major clauses

of ISO 9001:2000 standard. After designing this integrated system, it was subjected to peripheral

implementation study in a government-managed company situated in India. The knowledge portal

required for maintaining this integrated system was also developed.

Findings – ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 9001:2000 standards rest on the same process-based quality

system model which is comprised of five major clauses. Hence, the integrated system proposed in this

paper can be utilized by the contemporary organizations to infuse KM principles in ISO 9001:2008

based quality system.

Research limitations/implications – Though the integrated system designed in this research

could not be implemented in a full-fledged manner, the experiences gained have been useful to indicate

the future direction of research and practice for integrating KM principles with ISO 9001:2008

Supported Quality System.

Practical implications – A roadmap has been evolved to guide the practitioners to implement

Knowledge Managed ISO 9001:2008 Supported Quality System.

Originality value – No researcher or practitioner has so far contributed a model integrating the

process-based quality system incorporated in ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 standards with KM

principles. As this gap is filled in this paper, the contributions of this paper are valuable to both

researchers and practitioners.

Keywords Knowledge management, Information technology, ISO 9001, Knowledge portal,

Quality system

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

After Japanese products invaded the global market, the world community began to adopt

quality as a weapon for facing competition (Senthilkumar and Arulraj, 2011).

This marked the beginning of quality era. The world entered into quality era from

1970s. During quality era, a number of tools, techniques and approaches for achieving

high degree of quality in products and services emerged (Tari, 2005). This progression

culminated in the emergence of “Total Quality Management” (TQM) field. One of the

impacts of the emergence of TQM is the abundant ISO 9000 certifications in

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/1754-2731.htm

Received 15 November 2011

Revised 30 April 2012

14 September 2012

Accepted 14 January 2013

The TQM Journal

Vol. 26 No. 1, 2014

pp. 30-49

r Emerald Group Publishing Limited

1754-2731

DOI 10.1108/TQM-10-2011-0063

30

TQM

26,1

organizational arena. Although the ISO 9000 certifications are skill unabated, the

knowledge era has started to overshadow on them during the last two decades (Call, 2005;

Galliers and Newell, 2003). Knowledge had been considered as a treasure by humans from

ancient days. However, knowledge alone cannot act as a powerful mechanism to faster the

development of human race. Rather the human race is required to manage knowledge by

utilizing the competitive strategies (Lin and Wu, 2005; Chen et al., 2007). In other words,

the principles of knowledge management (KM) shall have to be integrated with

appropriate competitive strategies for achieving competitiveness and core competencies.

In this context, the integration of KM with ISO 9000 certification practice is recognized

as a synergic proposition.

The need of integrating KM with ISO 9000 certification practice has been

emphasized in literature scantly (Heng, 2001; Hellstrom and Husted, 2004; Lin and Wu,

2005; Abdullah and Ahmad, 2009). In spite of abundant literature on KM and ISO 9000

certification, only these four papers have mentioned the need of integrating KM with

ISO 9000 series quality system standards. These papers also do not deal with the

detailed methodology of infusing KM with an appropriate ISO 9000 series standard.

In order to fill this gap, this paper reports a research in which KM principles were

amended with the five clauses of ISO 9001:2000 quality system standard. The titles of

these five major clauses are “quality system,” “management responsibility,” “recourse

management,” “product realization” and “measurement analysis and improvement.”

As these titles imply, ISO 9001:2000 standard facilitates the formation of a quality

system which is to be supported by the management. This quality system should aid

product realization by applying appropriate resources. Finally, the installation of this

quality system should result in the continual quality improvement of the products,

processes and overall performance of the organization. These processes are

encapsulated in ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 standards under the model called

“process-based quality management system.” This model is based on Deming’s Plan

Do Check Act phases (Magd, 2006). During the research being reported here, KM

principles were infused in this model to design Knowledge Managed ISO 9001:2000

Supported Quality System. After examining its working in a company, a portion of the

portal of Knowledge Managed ISO 9001:2000 Supported Quality System model was

developed. The details of this work are presented in the following parts of this paper.

2. Research methodology

The research being reported in this paper was carried out by following the

methodology shown in Figure 1. As shown, the research was started by studying

the features of ISO 9001:2000 standard. Followed by that, features of KM were studied.

During these two phases of study, the literature was reviewed and the components of

KM were identified. Then, the feasibility of infusing those components in ISO

9001:2000 standard was explored. By referring to this explorative study, Knowledge

Managed ISO 9001:2000 Supported Quality System was designed by amending KM’s

core principles with ISO 9001:2000 standard. After that, the implementation of

this model was studied in an Indian public sector company. Portal development is

a hallmark of any KM project (Corbin et al., 2007; Devedzic, 2005) Hence, in this

research also the portal of Knowledge Managed ISO 9001:2000 Supported Quality

System was developed. In fact, rather than the implementation study, portal

development formed a core activity of this research. The experiences of pursuing this

research were utilized to evolve a roadmap for implementing Knowledge Managed ISO

9001:2000 Supported Quality System.

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Managed ISO