Quality Management ︎︎︎ Standard Operating Procedure

What is Standard Operating Precedure (SOP)?

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a set of written steps that captures the best practices of a field or industry as applied in a specific organization.

SOPs are created to provide the specific steps when handling activities and also ensuring the repeatability and consistency of the performance of any type of process. However, while SOPs pave a pathway to greater efficiencies in daily practices, creating them and maintaining them should never become an aim in itself. SOPs must serve the quality and efficiency, not the other way around.

Uses of SOP:

SOPs help employees perform complicated tasks and make it easier to measure processes. Also providing a structured approaches in the event of problems or emergencies. The procedures of an SOP also form the basis for training material for new employees. Moreover, they act as reference or refresher training for existing employees.

SOP in service industry:

SOPs can be thought of as a script — in the case of the service industry, the speech that a call center or hospitality workers use in greeting customers and responding to situations with a spoken-word formula.

SOP in pharma industry:

For the compliance requirements types of SOP, they standardize activity, guarantee consistency and quality, and provide a mean to record performance metrics and capture any path to deviation in the results.

The Format of a Standard Operating Procedure:

Here are the main characteristics of an SOP:

Written (not lore or word of mouth)

Structured in an approved template

Numbered and titled so that it can be easily located

Added to document control

Sponsored and signed off by management

Used in day-to-day activities

Reviewed regularly

Archived

There are two main parts of a SOP:

Steps to write a Procedure:

The SOP development, implementation, and revision procedure is similar to the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) quality management model: Research the steps in a procedure (plan); create the procedure (do); verify the procedure in a walk-through (check); and use the SOP to standardize daily activity and revise as needed (act).

SOP and lean:

The procedures are the manifestation of standardized work in a written form

The SOP provides a base reference for measurement, gab analysis and potential improvement.