Quality Management System with Wikis

The use of wikis is getting more and more prevalent. Corporations and institutions are adopting wikis for their formal corporate uses.

Geometrica has put up their case study on implementing a Quality Management System using wikis and have successfully attained their ISO 9001-2008 certification.

Here are some of the benefits with using wikis:

• Better control of documents – automatic versioning and notifications of updates
• Ease of management – documents are stored in a centralized place instead of multiple versions circulating around
• Ease in retrieval – with searching capability and centralized site. Viewing is directly on the browser without the need to download and open with another editor
• Helps in maintaining the integrity of the information – a paper-based system will require amendments to all documents with changes whereas wikis does it automatically
• Simplifies internal audits – all approvals recorded on the wikis without the need to printed documentations with signatures or separate email approvals
• Promotes continuous improvements – any mistakes can be reported (by comments) and corrected (by the reporter or the person in charge) almost instantly with email alerts in place.
• Encourage participation – people can give feedback easily or ask the rationale for certain policies. Understanding this will definitely helps in better conformance
• Lower cost – as compared to expensive document-control software with a “built-in” QMS manual which have little flexibility. Less time required to maintain and update the information too.

In fact, the use of wikis are not limited to quality management systems. A lot of financial firms are also using wikis to keep track of their policies as it is easy and fast to update (with the constantly changing regulations). The information can also be circulated easily without spamming everyone’s inboxes and searching is much more convenient and responsive as compared to digging the shared drives for the document.