Improving the Palestinian Standard (PS-15) for the Requirements of Quality System Needed to Hold Palestinian Quality Mark رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Quality Mark is an effective tool for organizations to improve customer satisfaction, deliver a product that meets standards, improve sales and exports of products, and encourage organizations to continuously improve and develop their processes and products. One of the conditions for obtaining the Palestinian quality mark, certified by the Palestinian Standards and Metrology Institutions, is that organizations should adopt a quality management system based on the Palestinian standard PS-15. According to Palestinian Standards and Metrology Institution, any Palestinian standard must be reviewed or upgraded every five years. Whereas the Palestinian Standard PS-15 was built and adopted by the Palestinian Standards and Metrology Institution as a basic requirement for obtaining the Palestinian Quality Mark in 1997, no review or upgrade has been done for the Palestinian Standard PS-15 until today. Furthermore, there are no previous studies related to improving the Palestinian standard PS-15. There are improvement opportunities in the PS-15which include improving product quality and building an effective system that reflects positively on the organization and customer’s satisfaction. This research aims to study, identify improvement opportunities in the Palestinian standard, and fill the gap in the literature. Three research methodologies have been adopted to achieve the research objectives. The first methodology was conducting via interviews and SWOT analysis to study the current version of the Palestinian standard PS-15 from the Palestinian Standards and Metrology Institution’s perspective. The second methodology was studying the current version of the Palestinian standard PS-15 from market perspective through surveying the V extent of fulfilling the quality management principles through applying the Palestinian standard PS-15. The third methodology was a comparison study between the ISO 9001:2015 requirements and the Palestinian standard PS-15 requirements to determine the gap in the Palestinian standard. The research summarizes the most important conclusions and recommendations such as the necessity of developing the Palestinian standard taking into account that it should be easy to apply by the organizations, built in a consistent and well-divided structure, and being drafted in a good way. The study also proved that the current Palestinian standard PS-15 does not achieve any of the ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Principles and stressed to add the missing requirements in the Palestinian standard PS-15related to Leadership, Support, Operation, Planning, and Improvement compared with ISO 9001:2015 requirements.