A Daunting Task

India is ranked 4th globally for the number of TL 9000 Certified Registration Locations. US leads with 578 locations, followed by China with 433 locations, South Korea with 258 locations and India has 208 locations. However India leads globally for the largest number of Telecom Service Providers certified to TL 9000.

TL 9000 Certifications started in India in 2001; Wipro Technologies being the first organization to get certified and which over the years was adopted by most of the leading telecom organizations-service providers, software development organizations, HW/equipment manufacturers, and engineering service providers.

As on July 31, 2012, around 48 organizations are certified to TL 9000 in India, including some of their offshore facilities in Brazil, China, Germany, Vietnam, Uruguay also being part of the certification.

Challenges to TL 9000 Certification

• Understanding TL 9000 Measurements: The fundamental challenge to achieving and sustaining TL 9000 Certification lies in the uniqueness of TL 9000 Standard from other Management System Standards (ISO 9001, ISO/TS 16949, ISO 13485, AS 9001, etc). While ISO 9001 and other management system standards require implementation and maintenance of 'requirements' (plus Core Tools, in case ISO/TS 16949), none require 'measurement' of organization performance against product/service specific 'quality parameters' and reporting them every month for global benchmarking. The TL 9000 Measurements Handbook, which is a necessary and conjunctive document to TL 9000 Requirements Handbook, describes in great detail the various 'customer centric measurements, their purpose, relevance, counting rules, exclusions, and computation methodology. Often organizations find it difficult to understand, interpret, and apply the requirements of TL 9000 Measurements Handbook to their scope of activities. Either they need to obtain help from Subject Matter Experts (SME) or learn by trial and error with some guidance and de-mystification from the certification body.
• Determining the Applicability of TL 9000 Requirement Adders: The certification to TL 9000 requires compliance to ISO 9001 Requirements and the TL 9000 Adders.

These adders follow each of the ISO 9001 Requirements and amplify the requirements as relevant to: Hardware (H), Software (S), and Services (V) domains. The adders which are common to all the domains are designated as 'C' and those adders which are common to more than one domain are designated as 'HV' or 'HS'. There are no adders designated as 'SV'. The table below illustrates the applicability of these adders to different telecom organizations:

• Establishment of User-friendly, Knowledge Enriching, and Performance Driving Management System: As for other management system standards, TL 9000 also requires establishment and documentation of a Quality Manual and Quality System Procedures. In addition to the mandatory 06 procedures required by ISO 9001, TL 9000 Standard mandates the establishment of another 13 procedures as listed below:

In addition it requires establishment, documentation and maintenance of various plans, processes, and methods as specified in the different adders.

The challenge for establishing a user-friendly, knowledge enriching, and performance driving management system is same as for other standards as more often organizations tend to establish:

• Quality Manual-as verbatim replication of the Standard;
• Procedures-by re-naming/linking up with legacy documents (ISO 9001, CMMI , ISMS etc) without critically evaluating their adequacy to address the intent of TL 9000 adders; and,
• Records/Databases-without critically evaluating their efficacy to generate data suitable for analysis and action.
• Active Involvement of Executive Management: All the management system standards require Top (Executive) Management commitment in establishing, maintaining, and improving the management system. However TL 9000 Standard has specific 'adders' (in addition to ISO 9001) requiring the executive management active involvement for following activities:

Experience shows that with the exception of a few, more often executive managements do not play active role and invest their attention and time in: Establishing a business focused management system; Reviewing its results; and demanding and driving its improvement. Rather management system establishment and administration is delegated to function/department heads, who more often double as 'management representatives'. Consequently the organization tends to view effective implementation of the management system as the 'responsibility/KRA' of the quality team or management representative alone rather than the collective responsibility of the entire organization.

• Administration of TL 9000 Measurements and Monthly Data Submission: Every TL 9000 Certified organization is required to submit to QuEST Forum, monthly measurements data as applicable to its products and services for benchmarking purposes. The data needs to be submitted not later than 7 weeks (49 calendar days) after end of the month. Either, missing submission of data for more than 3 months or more than 2 late submissions in the last 6 months and current month missing data would result in TL 9000 registration being moved to 'suspension status' by QuEST Forum. The organization needs to work with their Registrar/Certification Body to get suspension revoked. The sudden exit or change in the measurements administration process owner and inadequate training/briefing of the successor is often the cause for organizations to miss on measurements data submission and invite suspension.

Critical Factors for Sustaining and Benefiting from TL 9000 Certification

• Competent Management Representative: The effectiveness of management system is a function of-

Executive management commitment and active involvement and competence and character of the management representative. As managements look for core competence for various functions like engineering, production, sales, marketing, HR, IT, etc, they should look for core competence in the personnel to be entrusted with management system administration or management representative role.

To effectively establish management system and facilitate its understanding across the organization, verify and review its results through internal audits and drive process improvements, the management representative needs to have appropriate educational qualifications (preferably technical for better understanding of the various quality concepts), training in management system and quality tools and adequate experience of working with them.

• Establishing 'Pro-action' oriented Management System to achieve 'Sustained Success': The primary objective of the management system should be to enable proactive management of business processes by identifying potential risks in time and taking appropriate actions and thereby de-risk the business and sustain the success. This requires establishment of the management system by using structured risk assessment methodologies like FMEA/Fault Tree Analysis, etc, and process approach with built in P-D-C-A mechanism.
• Involvement and Collaboration with Stakeholders: The stakeholders need to be involved and collaborated with in the initial establishment of management system to gain from their expertise and wisdom for achieving complete and accurate processes documentation; train them on the standard and quality concepts; and create long-term process ownership among them.
• Ownership of Management System to be with Stakeholders: Post the establishment and rollout of the management system, the ownership for maintaining it and improving it should solely rest with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that it is self-sustaining.
• Inculcate the Value of 'Magic of Logic': Train process owners at relevant functions on logical and structured analytical techniques for enabling effective resolution of potential and actual problems.
• Focus Organization-wide on 'Pro-active Management': Identify and mandate proactive actions for each function/activity and reward suitably where appropriate. Discourage 'reactive management' by penalizing functions responsible for it.
• Use Internal/External Audits to De-risk Business: Use internal/external audits as instruments for de-risking the business through honest introspection. Plan and perform audits using competent resource and review and follow up audit outcomes. Accept non-conformances rather than stonewalling them or getting into denial mode. Use structured methods to contain issue through 'correction' and eliminate the root cause through appropriate corrective action.
• Demand Professionalism and Value Addition from Registrar/Certification Body: Contribute to effective external audits by sharing complete and updated information on organization/process with the Registrar/Certification Body; specifying organizational objectives, if any for the audit; and, demanding professionalism and value addition.

George Verghese
The author is an experienced quality
and management system professional
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in