Interview with BUMA-KOR BABILA Johanne, QHSE Manager, RDD/PAD with 8 years of experience in Dredging, Agribusiness, Logistic and transport.
1-What is quality for the company?
Quality to a company is an essential means for growth and development. It is an aspect you put in place within the company to ensure thorough respect of procedures, client satisfaction, time efficiency, safe quality product and services, financial growth through competivity and attractiveness and most importantly, wellbeing of your employees.
2-What are the quality criteria of a transport and logistics company?
- Time efficiency
- Reliable service for client satisfaction
- Product wholesomeness
- Well maintained equipment
- Safe and environmentally friendly working milieu
3-How useful is quality for an African transport and logistics SME that is already struggling to survive in a highly competitive environment?
Quality will help SME to grow through
- the respect of financial procedures of the company,
- improvement of client satisfaction
- respect of delivery time,
- proper maintenance of equipment through preventive and curative maintenance plan,
- application of product or service guidelines which help maintain wholesomeness of product
- a safe and environmental friendly work area
4-What are the benefits and limitations of quality for African SMEs?
PROS :
- Helps your company to be more attractive to its clients nationally and internationally
- Encourages competivity with other companies which helps identify loop holes for improvement
- Helps to develop a strict financial control within the company
- Ensures a more straight forwards flow of activities which favours time efficiency
- Builds a bridge for client satisfaction
- Builds a safe working environment
CONS:
- It is expensive
- it demands a lot of human resource to follow up procedures
- Poor financial management of owners
- Less regard to customer satisfaction
5-When is the best time for an SME to start a quality approach?
The best moment will be at the beginning. Once a company starts practicing quality services at the beginning, it orientate its employees towards quality service and helps correct the mistakes easily from the start. This enables the building of a quality work culture, which are passed on to several generation of employees.
6-What are the main steps of a quality approach?
- Scope of the organization
- Define the policy
- Elaborate measurable goals
- Develop the processes to accomplish these goals
- Document each process
- Monitor the processes
- Improve on the processes
7-What are the costs and timeframes to be considered for the implementation of a quality approach?
Principally we have two; cost of quality investment and cost of non-conformities.
8-Does the implementation of the quality approach necessarily lead to certification?
NO
9-What are the requirements following the implementation of a quality approach or certification?
Generally, after applying the quality approach, to can move forward to apply the requirements of ISO 9001 of the most recent version 2015.
A contribution of Logistique Magazine
