Retail Market Design Service
RMDS Quality Manual - Section 8 Measurement Analysis and Improvement
RMDS plans and implements the monitoring, measurement, analysis and improvement processes as needed.
- To demonstrate conformity of our products,
- To ensure conformity of the management system, and
- To continually improve the effectiveness of the management system.
Measurement Analysis and Improvement
8.2 Monitoring and Measurement
8.2.1 Customer Satisfaction
The Retail Market Design Service has committed to regular customer surveys and - depending on the business pressures on its customers - to meetings with its stakeholders (Retail Market Participants and the Commission for Energy Regulation). There are also many informal contacts during the year. These means and the annual Business Plan are used to identify customer expectations and any issues with the services provided. It is intended that surveys or meetings with Retail Market Participants will occur at least once a year. Meetings with CER occur in advance of the Retail Market meetings. Retail market participants are free to raise any issues they have with CER who will raise the issue with the RMDS team at any time.
Where the RMDS team is made aware of an issue, either via the stakeholder meetings or via CER, then it will update the annual work plan or raise a corrective action as appropriate.
8.2.2 Internal Audit
Internal audits are scheduled by the Quality Manager at least twice a year, ensuring that the auditors have the required experience and knowledge to perform auditing activities. The audit team will not consist of anyone who has responsibility or involvement in the area being audited.
Our first audit of RMDS Management System for compliance with ISO 9001:2000 was carried out by Group Internal Audit, of the RMDS Management System on 18th and 19th October 2006.
See attached report arising from this internal audit & our internal audit process.
Report - Group Internal Audit.pdf
Audit reports will be reviewed at the management review and the Quality Manager will have responsibility for ensuring that any issue raised is addressed in line with its priority and severity. Issues raised during an audit will be logged and assigned in Sharepoint and at a minimum, be addressed in advance of the next audit.
If necessary, the Quality Manager will arrange a follow-on audit to ensure that corrective actions have been effective.
Issue Logging and Tracking
The RMDS Group have implemented the Microsoft SharePoint Services management system to manage all its issues / actions. Any new issue that arises is logged by an RMDS user and assigned to the most suitable person within the RMDS team. On assignment of an issue, SharePoint informs the Assignee (via an automated Outlook Email along with a URL link to the issue) that they are now responsible for this new issue. The person logging the issue is required to enter various mandatory fields such as:
- Issue Description
- Issue Source
- Issue Status
- Issue Priority
Reports or views have been written to track the progress of each issue and alerts are sent if an issue hasn't been resolved within a set timeframe. These alerts allow RMDS to meet its Service Objective targets by responding to issues and actions in a timely co-ordinated fashion. The issue tracking system improves customer service and product support by:
- Tracking all issues simultaneously with no issue going unresolved
- Providing a full audit trail for all issues (by enabling the attachment of multiple support documents and providing date timestamps, and update comments for each version of the issue).
- Being able to automatically escalate issues if required
- Clearly identifying issue responsibilities, roles and timeframes
- Providing summary reports on the performance of the RMDS Group
The design of the Issue Log is regularly reviewed and updated in order to improve service offerings.
8.2.3 Monitoring and measurement of processes
RMDS has processes in place to monitor and review the effectiveness of the Management System processes in achieving planned results. This monitoring includes the measurement and tracking of our performance against our service objectives, feedback from our customers and improvement suggestions from our team members.
These inputs are reviewed at Weekly Catch-up Meetings, Team Meetings and Management Review Meetings. Corrective and Preventive actions are agreed and implemented in order to address any issues and to improve our performance.
8.2.4 Monitoring and measurement of product
A number of checkpoints exist in the system to ensure that all customer facing products are of sufficient standard and clarity to be released:
Change Control Documents
When a change control request is received, the Design Lead of the RMDS team will review the item with the request raised to ensure the requirements are fully understood prior to logging the request. Before release to the market, all change control documents (Drs, MCRs, DRRs) are reviewed by the workstream leads of the RMDS team, as well as the Manager RMDS. The RMDS Design Lead will also carry out a review with the ISC Design Authority. This ensures that all aspects of the impact of a change have been considered and that the implications for all parties and systems are fully understood.
IGG Secretariat documents
IGG Secretariat Documents (i.e. IGG and TAG minutes, action items, clarification documents etc) are reviewed by the Manager RMDS prior to issue to CER. CER also retain the right to amend the minutes of each session if they feel that an item has not been appropriately recorded
Baselined Retail Market Design Documents
Prior to publication to the market, the Design Lead will ensure that each market document or process has been independently verified and that an appropriate template has been completed.
Monitoring & Measurement of product
The Design Lead will ensure that the Retail Market Design documents are reviewed by someone who has not been involved in their preparation or update.
Where a Retail Market Design Document is discovered to be incorrect prior to issue then it will be passed back to its owner for modification. If a non conformance is discovered after product issue then either a note may be added to the product to highlight this, or if the issue is of sufficient severity, a new version of the product can be issued.
8.3 Control of Nonconforming Product
Where a non conforming product is identified, the appropriate Workstream Lead will determine the appropriate course of action. The Workstream Lead will raise a corrective action and implement it. The action will include (but is not limited to):
- Notifying Market Participants of an inaccuracy in a previously issued document and placing a similar note on the RMDS website
- Setting dates for the withdrawal of the product and the replacement of the product with a new, corrected version
- Keeping customers informed of progress
- Implementing complete withdrawal of the product including the documenting of the details of the non-conformance against the version number of the nonconforming version in the change history of the replacement version.
- Ensuring that the Nonconforming version is marked with an appropriate watermark or other means in SharePoint to inform any team members referring to that version in the future.
- Notifying customers that a previously agreed service objective will not be met and agreeing an alternative date for delivery.
Control of Non Conforming product
To ensure the ongoing efficiency of the Management System a number of Key Performance Indicators will be reviewed at each Management Review. Included in this will be:
- The number of queries received from customers
- The number of queries received which were closed outside the allowable timeframes
- The number of meetings for which secretariat products were issued to CER outside the allowable timeframes
- The number of change control documents which required to be re-issued as a result of ambiguities or deliverables not being fully understood
- The number of significant errors (i.e. factual errors etc) which appear on baselined Retail Market Design documents
- The number of non significant errors (i.e. typos etc) which appear on baselined Retail Market Design documents
8.5.1 Continual improvement
RMDS continually improves the effectiveness of the management system through the use of the quality policy, service objectives, audit results, analysis of data, corrective and preventive actions and management review.
8.5.2 Corrective action
RMDS takes action to eliminate the cause of nonconformities in order to prevent recurrence. Corrective actions are appropriate to the effects of the nonconformities encountered.
- Reviewing nonconformities (including customer complaints),
- Determining the causes of nonconformities,
- Evaluating the need for action to ensure that nonconformities do not recur,
- Determining and implementing action needed,
- Records of the results of action taken and
- Reviewing corrective action taken.
8.5.3 Preventive action
Any team member can raise a preventive action to eliminate the causes of potential nonconformities in order to prevent their occurrence. Preventive actions are appropriate to the effects of the potential problems.
Determining potential nonconformities and their causes
- Evaluating the need for action to prevent occurrence of nonconformities
- Determining and implementing action needed
- Records of results of action taken
- Reviewing preventive action taken
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ISO 9001 Quality