Define policies and procedures and set standards for employees to follow. International quality management systems such as ISO set standards that can be used as is or modified for your needs.
Train employees to rely on policy and procedures rather than making up their own ways of doing things. Establish processes for updating policies and procedures. Develop methods to train employees on modifications when they occur.
Create an index or outline of all the functions within the quality management system, such as customer relations, parts management, supplier relations, employee management, employee relations, executive strategy, production processing, quality inspection and corrective action process. Create a cross-reference list of the policies and procedures that relate to each of these functions. Address any gaps that you may have and link to existing policies when possible, rather than creating new policies that are redundant or conflict with existing procedures.
Assign auditor responsibility to staff members and train them on what to look for and how to record noncompliance issues. Instruct them to ask employees to provide them with the name of the policy or procedure they are working to. The auditor should have the procedure in front of him so that he can compare the actions of the worker to the procedure. If the worker varies in any way from what the policy says he should do, the auditor should record what happened and report back to quality team results as a finding.
Assess each finding to understand where problems are occurring. Policies and procedures are defined to provide information to management and employees about how processes are supposed to work. If the process as written doesn't make sense, fix the process. If the employees are not following the process because they didn't know about it, fix the training process. If the employees are not following the process because they don't want to, fix the culture and how disciplinary methods are managed.