Quality Control Management for Micro-Entrepreneurs
Quality Control
Essential for success and sustainability
When our business is small, and we hear about quality control management mechanisms and processes, it often seems like it’s not for us, not for small or micro-entrepreneurs. It sounds pompous, expensive, and we associate it with international standards and things that seem complicated, like ISO standards and complex systems. Has this ever happened to you?
It’s even possible that as a small or micro-entrepreneur, you’ve never even considered the possibility or the need to implement rigorous quality controls with established procedures.
It doesn’t matter if you’re small. Quality control is part of the ABCs of business and ensures an increase in the likelihood of success in your venture. That’s why today, we’re going to talk about what quality control management means and how you can implement it simply in your business.
What Does Quality Control Mean?
When we talk about quality control in a business, we refer to all the mechanisms and procedures we implement to detect errors and fix them before the product or service reaches our customers.
Quality Control Even in Small Daily Tasks
If you write an email, you must read it and open each attached document before sending it. The number of times I’ve almost sent emails to the wrong people, with incorrect attachments, or with incomplete information but caught them in time to avoid problems is countless.
If you assign a task to someone, you must ensure not only that the task is completed but also that it’s done following the procedures you indicated and that the final result meets the requirements you’ve defined to satisfy the client.
The small quality control tasks you perform daily contribute to identifying flaws in the final product or service and opportunities for process improvement.
Quality Control: A Concept with Multiple Criteria
Quality control management, whether for large corporations or small or micro-entrepreneurs, goes beyond technical product specifications. While it was previously applied as a verification of the final product’s compliance with functional requirements, today, it applies to any process for products or services in any business, regardless of size.
Quality control involves verifying that things are done:
Correctly
Following designed processes
To customer satisfaction
On time
With allocated resources
Profitably
In a way that ensures they sell
Ensuring the process and final product are safe
Meeting both general sector requirements and specific company standards.
This way, quality control management involves considering multiple criteria:
Technical and production: Safe and efficient processes.
Marketing and sales: Competitive products and services that meet customer needs.
Financial: Proper resource use and economic benefits.
Legal: Compliance with sector regulations.
Communication and image: Products and services that positively contribute to your business’s image.
Don’t Leave It to Chance
Quality control is something you must take seriously because it directly impacts your business’s success.
Don’t rely on your memory or your collaborators’ memory. Don’t trust “by eye” estimates, approximations, luck, or that external processes and services will always work flawlessly.
Proper quality control management for micro-entrepreneurs requires rigor, discipline, and objectivity. It requires designing and implementing:
Standardized processes for all your products and services.
Quality control processes, specifying all validation points.
Adequate, thorough, and continuous training for everyone involved.
Monitoring the production process, checking all the validation points you defined.
Following up with customers to ensure their needs are met.
Customer feedback is the final step in the quality control of your processes and products. Negative feedback, whether a complaint or a suggestion for improvement, probably indicates that you missed a control, didn’t perform controls properly, or that the quality control management design was incomplete.
The Before, During, and After of Quality Control Management
Quality control management for micro-entrepreneurs is a continuous process. We can identify tasks to accomplish and aspects to consider before, during, and after the process that allows for producing your product or service.
Here’s a brief summary of what you should consider in each stage:
Before:
Design your product or service to meet customer needs according to the promise you make.
Design the production process to achieve that product or service under the required conditions, standardized so each product or service unit delivers equivalent results.
Design the quality control process itself: identify the points to check throughout the process to fix errors as early as possible.
Design the tools you’ll use for the quality control process, like flowcharts or checklists.
Train your staff (or yourself if you’re the sole operator) to ensure everyone knows the production and quality control process with all its validation points.
During:
Implement the production process according to the plan.
Implement the quality control process, adhering to the defined checkpoints.
Correct errors. It makes no sense to identify possible errors if you don’t take action.
Implement internal supervision and inspection processes.
After:
Confirm the final product or service meets the required standard.
Investigate the level of customer satisfaction.
Identify improvement opportunities.
Conduct external audits, if necessary.
Ensuring Standardized Results
Ultimately, what you want with quality control management is to ensure standardized results.
For products, this means they all meet the same quality standard, being identical and comparable in fulfilling customer needs. For services, this means each service delivery provides equivalent experiences and results.
It’s about being reliable
Reliability means the implemented processes and controls will enable anyone following the processes as designed to achieve equivalent results with a standard level of quality.
While quality control processes for large companies involve multiple definitions, systems, and standards—like ISO norms—small-scale quality control can and should focus on simplicity without sacrificing rigor.
Regardless of your size, quality control management for your products or services is a vital part of your success and, most importantly, your ability to endure over time.