Although a lowly ex SEP flyer, I am intrigued by this thread as it I see it covering a lot of the "philosophical" aspects of Quality Management. When not reading the prune, I am engaged in engineering design and there are many quality related issues. My industry abounds with template type QA systems which are designed as one size fits all, are very high falutin and in my mind are often ineffective. Taking inspiration from the aviation world, I re-worked my own operation based around checklists. These checklists are essentially a list of the most common stuff-ups consistently re-appearing. The "standard" stuff-ups list was compiled in discussions and looking back at previous problems. In time, new errors become apparent and are sometimes added, if warranted.
So the lists are simply to check on the most common errors. They have proved highly effective. Some wag added: "Folks, I want to see NEW mistakes..." in other words, lets not repeat the old ones!
These checklists are designed with the philosophy "Did you do it?" not "This is how you do it"