Our Fantasy League’s quality policy is to provide a competitive product and services of the highest standards of performance and reliability. By achieving this goal the League will consistently satisfy the needs and expectations of our customers and friends.

To ensure success of this policy League Management are directly responsible providing organisation and support, equipment and facilities, training and education of all members, reviewing and auditing performance, and driving continuous improvement in our own teams.

The League Management’s Quality Objectives are:

a)   To maintain an effective League Management System complying with International Standards if possible

b)   To provide a competitive product and services of the highest standards of performance and reliability, thus enhancing the League’s reputation with customers and friends

c)   To ensure compliance with relevant customer, statutory and regulatory requirements. (The Rules)

d)   To endeavour, at all times, to maximize customer satisfaction but still win all the prize money ourselves

e)   To pro-actively promote and encourage a culture of continuous improvement for our own teams within the league whilst at the same time recommending disastrous transfers to other members

The Fantasy League League Website provides control of documents (Clause 4.2.3), records (Clause 4.2.4) and the rules. External Document Control (Clause 4.2.4) was provided by OPTA statistics as these were approved as the authority to judge player performance by the League Management.

Team scores on a weekly basis were subjected to Internal Audit (Clause 8.2.2) a record of results and follow up actions were documented.

 Management Commitment (Clause 5.1) was demonstrated spending precious time watching every game available, Customer Focus (Clause 5.2) was intense, especially as we wanted to beat all our customers and run off with the prizes.

There were many painstaking hours of Planning (Clause 5.4) taken in preparation for the weekend’s games: who was on form? Who was injured? Who was playing who? Again corrective action was required: I need to get rid of Bramble he’s a liability and Wigan’s defence is leaking goals like a sieve!

Responsibility & Authority was allocated to each member. They had their own team name and password so it was their own problem if they forgot to sign out! I also noted that my nominated deputy would have taken great pleasure in stitching up my team by making excessive transfers and buying players who were injured.

 Internal Communication (Clause 5.5) was based on quantity rather than quality especially after watching football for 5 hours in the bar. Follow up on performance was regularly conducted via forums and e-mails although clearly the League Internal Auditor had his work cut out here.

Management Review (Clause 5.6) was conducted at the end of the each month when a Manager of the Month was nominated and then the end of the season where team awards were given out.

 Resources (Clause 6.1) Cash and Management Time to collect cash, Design and Development (Clause 7.3.2 -7.3.7) set up of the League, Training (Clause 6.2) How to use the Fantasy Football website, Infrastructure (Clause 6.3) Bar computer and Work Environment (Clause 6.4) Bar again! were all provided to ensure the League ran smoothly.

 Purchasing (Clause 7.4) was the easiest of chores thanks to Budweiser’s free website and a little of our management resource.

Production (Clause7.5.1) Seemed to be the difficult part: How has Downing missed a penalty again? (and why did I leave him in my team?), Why did I chose Ronaldo as captain the week Ferguson decides to give him a rest?, and why has O’Neil taken Knight off after 59 minutes, surely he knows I’ve got him in my defence?

 Identification and Traceability (Clause 7.5.3) was straight forward, everyone’s performance was available to all at the touch of a button you could see disastrous transfers, silly nominations as captains etc.

Customer Property (Clause 7.5.4) (Cash) was held and managed by the League nominated Management Representative.

 Calibration (Clause 7.6) and verification of measuring equipment were provided by OPTA statistics as these were the approved International standard.

 Monitoring and Measurement (Clause 8.2) and Analysis of Data (Clause 8.4) was carried out weekly after each set of games, when each player would seek some improvement by taking preventative or corrective action the following week.

Non-conforming product (Clause 8.3) was dealt with by immediate transfer out and the purchase of a more consistent goal scoring product.

 Customer Satisfaction (Clause 8.2.1) was apparent at the end of the season when the prizes were given out. If only it was as easy to get the cash off them at the start!

It was my first day in my new role and I was shown to the Technical Manager’s office. “Oh, there seems to be a lot of quality manuals in here” I said. “Yes” the Technical Secretary said, “That’s our Quality Management System, ISO 9001 certification has created a monster”

I spent several hours, no days or even maybe weeks looking through my new library, the Quality Management System consisted of Policies, a Quality Manual, Production Procedures, Laboratory Manual, Laboratory Procedures, Process Specifications, and Testing Schedules etc.

The Quality Management System was fairly standard, however, every single document used a thousand words when one would suffice. I was in big trouble, there was no way I was going to be able to manage all this paperwork and maintain our ISO 9001 certification, so we had major work to do and hopefully would save a rain forest in the process!

The Quality Management System contained a Process Specification for every single one of our 200 products and each one was 90 pages long! So by my maths the manual contained 18,000 pages! I was ruthless and condensed the Process Specifications to a one page quality process summary. As you can imagine on the next ISO 9001 surveillance visit I was more than a bit apprehensive! The Lead Assessor was almost as relieved as I was. Here in plain and simple English or with a flow diagram we had outlined exactly what we did. It was simple it was basic but it reflected what we did, how we did it and the control points in our process.” I can confidently say you have made your quality management system significantly more efficient” said the Lead Assessor.

Flushed with the positive review from our Lead Assessor, I continued my war on paper and condensed our quality management system documentation. It was a case of keep it simple, document what you do, don’t document something just for the sake of trying to create paperwork.

As a department we were able to free up time and resource to concentrate on improving our quality management system effectiveness and efficiency. This is turn was reflected in other departments in the factory. We were able to extend the scope of our ISO 9001 certification to a new production facility with relative ease. That was in 1994 and now the ISO 9001:2008 standard is far more practical and user friendly, it generates a focus and disciplines that are invaluable to any business. The standard is a quality management system tool that is now my friend rather than my enemy.