The Quality Management Office (QMO) was established to develop, implement, maintain, and continuously improve the Quality Management System (QMS) of Far Eastern University. It aims to assist the University in developing processes that conforms to international quality standards, in nurturing a service-oriented community, in providing quality educational services, in ensuring less complaints from students, parents, and other stakeholders, and in committing to continuous improvement to attain quality. QMO further assists the different offices in overcoming challenges in the implementation of the QMS. Finally, it aims to achieve and maintain ISO 9001 certification of the QMS of Far Eastern University.
Fiscal Year 2015-2106 has been very stable for the QMO. Maintenance of the ISO 9001:2008 certifications of FEU Manila and Makati campuses has been successful with the completion of the following activities during the year.
Control of Documents and Records
One of the requirements of the ISO standard is the control of documents and records. Over the past year, QMO, with Grace Licudine as the Document Control Officer, has constantly been assisting different offices in the maintenance of their respective documents and records to ensure compliance to ISO standards.
More than a hundred documents consisting of policies, procedures, and forms, have been registered, revised, or written-off as obsolete to ensure that the management system of the University is up-to-date with recent changes that were implemented. These activities are an indication of continuous improvement of the management system.
Internal Quality Audit
One of the requirements of ISO standard is to conduct an Internal Quality Audit (IQA). For the fiscal year 2015-2016, two IQAs were completed:
Supplemental IQA (29-31 July 2015)
The supplemental audit aims to ensure that all audit finding of the previous year’s audit have been addressed and that the management system of the University is not compromised.
The audit resulted to 91out of 103 or 88.35% audit findings from fiscal year 2014-2015 have been closed-out. This audit is better than previous years where there were no records of auditing findings being closed out. Better result is expected in the next supplemental audit for Fiscal Year 2015-2016.
Complete IQA (22-27 August 2015)
The complete audit aims to ensure that the entire management system of the University has been compliant to ISO 9001:2008 standard. The complete audit was performed with the help of the following members of the Internal Quality Audit Team (IQuAT).
Team A: Edwin Maclang, Richard Glenn Reyes, Josie Siongco
Team B: Philip Salloman, Milagros Lapastora, Karren Meñez, Kert Fetalco
Team C: Lazaro Nicdao Jr., Christian Roxas-Corpuz, Ma. Editha Reyes
Team D: Rowena Manansala, Ramon Picadizo, John Rick Chua
Team E: Ma. Victoria Sido, Christine Bustamante, Rozsano Ayson
On 2-4 September 2016, a post-audit consolidation was conducted with all the members of the IQuAT at Seorabeol Grand Leisure Hotel at Subic Bay Freeport Zone.
The post-audit consolidation resulted to 90 findings of minor non-conformances. This is 12.62% better than the previous fiscal year – FY 2014-2015. With these efforts, it is expected the management system of the University will improve significantly.
External Audit
As required from all ISO – certified organizations, the 7th Surveillance Audit of FEU in both Manila and Makati Campuses, was held on 21 to 23 September 2015. The audit was led by Mr. Roy Ramos and Mr.
Charlie Labrador from TÜV SÜD PSB Philippines.
The result of the audit and comparison with the previous external audit follows:
Type of Audit Finding
FEU Manila Campus FEU Makati Campus Previous Current Previous Current
Nonconformities 0 0 0 0
Minor
Nonconformities 12 14 6 4
Opportunities for
Improvement 6 7 3 5
Total 18 21 9 9
In compliance to the ISO requirement, FEU submitted to TÜV SÜD the root cause analyses and intended corrective action for the audit findings five working days after the audit. These audit findings will be verified in the next Internal Quality Audit and External Audit if closed out.
On 13 November 2015, TÜV SÜD PSB Philippines sent a notice, that ISO 9001:2008 certification of Far Eastern University for both Manila and Makati campuses, has been maintained.
Manila Campus: Certificate for compliance to ISO 9001:2008 with the scope: “Provision and Development of Tertiary and Post-Graduate Educational Degree and Non-Degree Courses, in accordance to CHED Policies, Standards and Guidelines, PACUCOA and PAASCU
Makati Campus: Certificate for compliance to ISO 9001:2008 with the scope: “Provision and Development of Tertiary and Post-Graduate Educational Degree, in accordance to CHED Policies, Standards and Guidelines.”
The Next Challenges
ISO Certification of other FEU Schools
FEU Diliman and FEU Information Technology have started efforts towards ISO 9001 certification.
FEU Manila being the first to be ISO 9001 certified mandates its Quality Management Office to provide all needed support to achieve certification of other FEU Schools. It is expected that both FEU Diliman and FEU Information Technology will achieve ISO 9001:2015 certification by the year 2017.
ISO 9001:2015
In September 2015, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a new version of the ISO 9001 standard – ISO 9001:2015. With this publication, all ISO 9001:2008 organizations are given a three-year transition period to migrate to the new standard.
FEU has until the next repeat audit, which is sometime in September 2017, to make the transition and make its management system conform to the new ISO 9001:2015 standard.
The challenge begins with FEU spreading awareness of the new standard. Series of trainings should immediately follow with all stakeholders, and series of audits both internal and external, if possible, must be conducted to ensure that the University will have a smooth transition from the old standard to the new ISO 9001:2015 standard.