Q1 : “What is Outsouring?”
i) Outsourcing is the transfer of products, services, and business processes to an external service provider.
ii) Outsourcing involves contracting with an outsourcing partner, which may or may not involve offshoring.
iii) Other terms used in the outsourcing world are “multisourcing”, “nearshoring”, etc.
Q2: “Why Outsourcing?”
Four factors were considered:
i) Significantly reduce overall costs.
ii) Reduce “Time to Volume” (TTV) for new products.
iii) Access to an abundance of human resources, localized skills and knowledge, etc.
iv) Supply chain efficiencies when products are shipped directly to customers (Drop Ship) – which related to Lean.
Q3: “What Does Quality have to do with outsourcing?”
Quality is applicable to the overall process of creating products and/or services, which all aspects of outsourcing are considered. Without due diligence and appropriate controls, outsourcing could end up being costlier than in-house manufacturing or service, and customer dissatisfaction.
Therefore, ISO 9001:2008 version concerned the control over outsourced processes.
i) Quality in Project Management
· Scope Creep, Risk Management & Lessons Learned
· Challenges: IP Protection
ii) Quality in Team Management
· Managing multicultural team and their roles & responsibilities
· RACI or RASCI (Who responsible? Who accountable? Who to be consulted? Who to be informed? Who to be supporter?)
· Challenges: Team Attribute and Virtual Teams
iii) Quality in Communications Management
· Avoid the lost out of listening (using active listening)
· Challenges: Technical Interpretation & Virtual Teams
iv) Quality in Knowledge Management
· Structured Approach: DIKW Chain-the-metaphorical (Link, pace & node of transfer)
· Challenges: Tacit Knowledge (Encourage documenting tacit knowledge by driving out fear)
v) Quality in Supply Chain Management
· Supplier Selection, Performance, Improvement & Service Level Agreement (SLA)
· Challenges: IP Protection
vi) Quality in Engineering Management
· Business Model; Traceability-record Retention and Third Party Surveillance
· Challenges: Failure Cost
Making Compliance a Competitive Advantage Integrated Quality Management Software System Source : http://www.etq.com/qms/
