How should non-value-added activities be addressed in a QMS?

• A. They should be identified, eliminated or minimized to improve efficiency and focus on value-adding tasks.
• B. They should be expanded.
• C. They should be ignored.
• D. They should be outsourced regardless.

Answer: (A)

In a QMS, focus is on making sure every action either adds value for the customer or is required for compliance and quality control. Non-value-added activities are steps that don’t contribute to those goals, so the aim is to identify them and eliminate or minimize them. This improves efficiency and keeps attention on activities that truly matter for quality and delivery. By mapping processes, you can spot excessive documentation, duplicate approvals, or unnecessary handoffs and streamline them, possibly through standardization or automation. Some regulatory or safety records may be required, so the job is to reduce the burden of these activities while preserving the necessary controls. Expanding non-value-added work would waste resources and slow things down, ignoring them misses chances for improvement, and outsourcing everything doesn’t automatically reduce waste and can introduce compliance or control risks.