Using Information Technology to Manage the Change Process in Organisations

Abstract

A great deal of information is held within the quality management systems (QMS) of many companies. This information is collected and stored primarily to aid the quality system in its task of monitoring the companies performance and in allowing third party auditors access to the information that they need to make judgements on the health of the QMS. In general auditors have little time to access more than just a small sample of this information and it is an aim of the project described in this paper to make the information that companies have much more easily accessible to auditors and management alike both in its raw form and in its summary form. The project shows how, by using intelligent systems that can access a company’s QMS the change process can be eased. At present the quality of the automated information processes that we can build is far below that of an experienced auditor. However because of the speed and costs of on-line computing, much more information can be used in forming a view of the workings of the QMS. It is expected that this tool will aid the auditor make much better informed judgements leading to many benefits to both the company and the auditor.