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TL 9000 Consulting and Training

Quality Experts, Inc. provides on-site training and coaching support for companies that are pursuing TL 9000 registrations.  Since 1987, our company has been assisting organizations to implement, maintain and certify their Quality Management Systems.

100% of our clients have passed their certification audits on the first attempt. We use an approach that is fast and thorough (in some cases as quick as 45 days) as well as cost-effective. In the end, you will have a quality system that you understand and can easily maintain.

We can assist you with implementing and/or maintaining your TL 9000 quality management system by developing and writing required documentation, conducting Internal Audits, training Internal Auditors, training employees to become and remain competent for the Management Review, Corrective Action and Continuous Improvement activities that are required by the TL 9000 standard.

Contact us today to get started towards TL 9000 registration!

Our Approach

TL 9000 implementation, when done correctly, does not require you to adopt unfamiliar procedures but can be based on matching your current activities to address the TL requirements. We always begin by documenting your processes as they are. Then we verify and document that all of the TL requirements are met by your current processes. Usually nothing more than “tweaking” is required to bring your processes up to the TL level.

Once the system is documented we train your employees to conduct simple and easy maintenance activities that require limited experience of the standard itself and ensure easy and inexpensive operating costs. Our systems are designed so that as they mature, they drive tangible benefits of continual performance improvement from your TL based system.

Our approach is to very precisely interpret the standard and apply it in a way that makes sense to you while being compliant with the standard. We’ll never ask you to do anything that is not in the standard and will always try to focus you on adding value. We will also try to steer you towards reliable, precise and inexpensive registrars!

 We believe that an TL management system can provide tremendous benefits to an organization, increasing performance and reducing fire-fighting but we recognize that at least part of the objective of your TL project is usually to get an TL certificate. Our consultants are RABQSA certified Lead Auditors. That means that they know exactly what the registrar will be looking for in the certification audit.

There are things to do to make it easy to pass an audit and others that will make it difficult. One absolutely critical concern is to build an TL system that can be demonstrably proven to meet the requirements. Although documented procedures are only mandatory in six areas of TL, our procedures address all requirements so that they are easily explained and maintained. If you don’t have procedures to describe how you meet all the requirements, then how are you going to ensure you consistently address them? How are you going to train new people and explain to them the required processes and importantly, if an auditor asks how a particular requirement of TL is addressed then how are you going to remember the correct answer – especially if the people involved in your original TL project have moved on?

We take your existing processes and activities and document them! This is the approach we use, as described above. You end up with a set of documents that meaningfully describes what you do and easily correlates with the standard.

Contact us today to get started towards TL 9000 registration!

What is TL 9000?

TL 9000 is a quality management system for design, development, production, delivery, installation and maintenance of telecommunication products and services. The TL 9000 Quality System requirements include a minimum set of performance metrics and indicators to measure progress and evaluate results of the quality system implementation. The TL 9000 standard became effective March 30, 2001 and comprises the ISO 9001:2000 quality system requirements (released December 15, 2000) supplemented by additional quality system requirements established by the telecommunications industry.

Who is responsible?

After the 1984 breakup and reorganization of AT&T into the seven regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs), there was a revolution in the telecommunications industry. A customer/supplier forum, the Quality Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications, or QuEST Forum, was created to develop quality systems for the industry. This was a radically new approach to standard development. Suppliers and telecom service providers had an equal vote in developing the new standard. By adopting the ISO 9000 system and the existing infrastructure of registrars, trainers and consultants the QuEST Forum could take advantage of existing systems in the same way the automotive industry had with QS 9000. The resulting product was the TL 9000 standard.

Who is getting registered to TL 9000?

The TL 9000 will be applicable to an estimated 10,000 suppliers around the world. Major organizations in this industry such as AT & T, Verizon, Motorola, Nortel Networks, Marconi, NEC, SBC and Unicap Electronics Industry Corp. have already gotten registered and it is expected they will be requesting suppliers to follow.

What are the benefits of TL 9000?

Some of the reported benefits of a TL 9000 registration are:

• Improved service to customers
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Standardization of quality system requirements
• Increased competitiveness
• Higher reliability of services
• Wider market opportunities
• Increased efficiency
• Overall cost reductions
• Creation of platform for improvement initiatives

What is the registration process?

In simplified terms, the registration process includes:

• a review of the organizations documentation
• a physical audit of the site or sites
• after verifying the implementation of the quality system, and pending closure of any corrective actions identified, a company is registered.

What’s different about TL?

TS 16949 (Automotive standard) asks suppliers to benchmark trends in customer satisfaction and key indicators of customer dissatisfaction to be verified by a third party auditor. TL 9000, in addition to third party audits, requires suppliers to anonymously report standard measurements to the University of Texas at Dallas. Benchmarking reports are generated for the supplier and QuEST Forum members to use for self-comparison purposes. In this way both the supplier and the customer are involved in a communication loop to assess and improve their industry and relationship. A great deal can be learned about an industry when measurements are standardized by supplier and product type. Companies can readily identify weaknesses they can correct to improve their business and customer satisfaction.

In addition, Best Practice Offerings (BPO) were created to identify, recognize, share, and facilitate the deployment of best practices in the telecommunications industry and promote continual improvements in product and services quality. Industry studies show that companies using business excellence models, such as Malcolm Baldrige or EQM, regularly outperform peers in financial terms. Business excellence models help organizations advance from quality conformance to performance excellence. As an organization’s quality management system matures, QuEST Forum provides the necessary tools and resources to make this transition through conferences, events and an innovative knowledge base.

What Next?

Contact us today and we will help you start the process towards improved productivity, reduced waste and the prestige of TL 9000 registration.