Book excerpt: Next Level Results for Your QMS You don't just want a compliant quality management system, you want a robust one a QMS that's easy to implement and maintain. Beyond Compliance Design merges two sets of experiencess that of a quality system designer/auditee and that of an external auditor to help you make that possible. Move beyond a focus on checking all the right boxes to the opportunities for continuous improvement, waste reduction, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction and delight. Author Janet Bautista Smith, with the contributions of external auditor, Robert Alvarez, guides you in this process with her models, case studies, lessons learned, and an array of simple tools and templates you can customize for your organization and begin using immediately, including: Implementing layered metrics to align with the auditor's perspective Employing DMAIC analysis to process customer complaints Discovering hidden factories through a Process Grid Walk Addressing common pitfalls of documentation systems with lean solutions Achieving operational compliance and excellence within processes Determining QMS, customer, and auditor satisfaction Fostering synergy among the QMS, customer, and auditor perspectives Engaging management review for critical support