Quality Management
TMB recognizes that clearly defined Quality Management is essential to delivering quality products and services. We also recognize that levels of process maturity are incrementally achieved and require a long-term corporate commitment to continuous process improvement. The cornerstone of the TMB Quality Management System (QMS) is the Process Improvement (PI) philosophy that focuses on customer requirements and building quality in, rather than inspecting defects out, of our products and services. Every TMB Associate is empowered and encouraged to continuously seek both deliverable quality and process improvement. TMB policy is to create a framework to build a quality culture where process maturity can be achieved through planning, discipline, standardization, measurement, and improvement. In addition, it is our policy to implement processes which are compliant with corporate Quality Standards in every engagement and implement a tailored Quality Management Plan (QMP) to ensure a low risk, highly successful project. Our QMP guides the project organization in ensuring the development of high quality products and support services and is built on the principles of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and ISO 9001:2000. TMB also understands that QMP implementation is a partnership with our customers and subject to review, approval and update based on measurement systems and customer feedback.
Quality Planning
Effective planning and control on any project, reduces the likelihood of problems occurring and normally results in the completion of project objectives within budget and on schedule. In addition, planning provides foresight to identify arising problems therefore providing time for corrective action. Our Quality Planning includes:
- Establishing a common understanding with our customers of the support services and deliverable requirements that will be addressed by TMB and priorities for the management and execution of concurrent tasks across functional areas.
- Establishing reasonable, process compliant plans for performing the services and producing project deliverables. These plans will be the foundation for tracking and oversight.
- Exercising Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) to provide the Program Manager with appropriate visibility into the services and deliverables provided.
- Establishing measurement plans and processes to track technical performance, project cost, subcontractor management, scheduled deliverables, and overall responsiveness.
- Complying with established review processes to maintain the integrity of project deliverables through review for accuracy, completeness, and quality prior to delivery.
Quality Control
For each engagement, TMB assigns a qualified and trained Program Manager who will establish and oversee accomplishment of quality policy and objectives, quality responsibilities, conduct management reviews, and ensure continual communications. Each Program Manager will be responsible for developing a Quality Assurance Manual (QAM) for the production and review of all deliverables, conduct annual customer surveys, quarterly internal audits, process and product measurements, control of nonconforming product, analysis of data, and implementation of corrective and preventive actions as needed.
Quality Audits
In order to measure compliance to the QMP and QAM, quality audits will be scheduled prior to each Quarterly Program Review (QPR) with results presented to our customers. Any noncompliance issues identified during the audit will be documented and detailed as part of an audit report. Corrective action requests will be issued and follow up activities including the verification of proper implementation and effectiveness of corrective action activities. Data provided by the audit process will serve as valuable input to the process improvement function.