ISO 9000:2000 
~ A Significant change for Quality Management Consultants?  

Presented to the IEE by David Hoyle in February 2000

The birth

George Santayana, the 19th century Spanish philosopher, observed that  

"those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

..and on the eve of a major initiative to improve quality we consultants might well repeat our mistakes unless we recognize there is a need for change.

In 1982 the British Government white paper on Standards, Quality and International Competitiveness encouraged British Industry to pursue Certification to quality standards. In those days, quality assurance systems were seen as a means to achieve product standards which were central to international competitiveness. The White Paper triggered the birth of the Quality System Certification infrastructure and with it the drive for BS 5750 certification.

Believing that BS 5750 would relieve them of supplier assessment, purchasers began to require their suppliers to register to BS 5750 some putting on pressure to achieve certification by a certain date or they would be removed from the list of approved suppliers. Many suppliers lacked the resources and responded by seeking help from management consultants.

In order to bump start this drive for competitiveness, the UK's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) launched a scheme that offered grants to offset the costs of using consultants. This scheme gained momentum on release of ISO 9000  in 1987 and lasted well into the 90’s but on being terminated, the demand for ISO 9000 certification began to decline. To support the demand for assistance with BS 5750 and later ISO 9000 implementation programmes, the DTI commissioned PERA (The Production Engineering Research Association) to establish a register of suitable consultants.  Many consultancy practices were registered as well as individual consultants, but there was no accreditation process that would guarantee the quality of the consultant that would be provided.

The rise

Triggered by the demand, the popularity of BS 5750 and later ISO 9000 began to rise at an alarming rate. The DTI scheme led to 15 day consultancy projects and some clients believed they could actually develop a compliant quality system with just 15 days of support. Many in fact found they needed much more support and so the demand triggered a rise in number of quality management consultancy practices. Consultancy became a new career opportunity and the travelling consultant carrying a copy of the standard and a set of manuals was born. The initial demand from purchasers led to a race for certification and with it the notion that once they had the certificate they would get more orders, therefore putting the badge on the wall became a key business objective.

Consultants sent out the message that ISO 9000 was all about systems of documentation and this was being fuelled by the auditors who appeared to be more concerned about documentation than product quality. As almost every clause in ISO 9000 required documented procedures and records they told their clients that all they had to do was "Document what you do, do what you document and prove it". Even a brochure of a well known firm of consultants of the early 90's displayed the popular triangle implying that people and technology were not part of the quality system. The result of the drive for ISO 9000 certification is a staggering 324,000 ISO 9000 certificates issued world wide but how many of these systems are delivering improved business performance is questionable.

The fall

The demand in the UK  began to fall as the DTI pulled the plug on the grant aided scheme. It also signalled the turning point  in credibility as many organizations were now feeling the pinch of recession and finding that their investment in  ISO 9000 was not the quick fix they thought it to be.

Around the world the ISO 9000 20 element based system appears to dominate the field. There was no requirement in ISO 9000 for the system to be constructed around the 20 elements of the standard, but invariably this is what the consultant and third party auditors advised. After all it was easy to audit for conformity. We have encountered clients whose only aim was to put a badge on the wall. They were not interested in ISO 9004 or meeting the intent of the ISO 9000 family - they were only interested in conforming with the requirements of the assessment standard and achieving certification. This was not helpful to those consultants whose mission was to improve business performance and hence many moved away from ISO 9000, some condemning it publicly. The unhelpful messages of "document what you do-do what you document" led to systems of documentation, not documented systems. Emphasis was placed on writing procedures and producing records with the result that quality systems were perceived as sets of documents. Consultants were finding themselves in a "catch 22" situation wanting to add value but having to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s because the auditors were focusing on none value-added activities. This was undermining those consultants who were keeping their eye on the original objective of improved efficiency and product quality.

To this day, one can purchase a set of manuals and procedures off-the-shelf. Consultants came to their clients with pre-written procedures in their brief cases. "Change the logo and their yours for under £1500!" Some firms offer certification for a set price and include the documentation - clearly they have misunderstood what ISO 9000 is all about.

There was a failure to educate consultants and as a result the approaches taken were inconsistent with the intent of the standard. Many organizations were ignorant about ISO 9000 therefore the demand and the lack of regulation led to inappropriate advise being supplied. The effort to regulate consultants still persist but little is done to ensure they are properly educated. When one considers that these consultants were judged on their success in getting clients registered it was not too difficult to find many that had delivered this prize. After all, what was needed was a set of documents. Cultural and behavioural change was needed but was not part of the deal.  Unfortunately the prize is awarded for conformance to standards not for performance against business objectives which is often only measurable over a much longer period.  The persistent focus on procedures and document control, led to the view that ISO 9000 has nothing to do with quality and was about administrative systems. This was inevitable. If one keeps on about performance when auditors are only interested in conformance, sooner or later, those consultants that deliver what pleases the auditors will prevail and the genuine consultants will find it hard to convince clients to do more.

Many organizations will claim they have benefited from ISO 9000 certification but few if any claim breakthrough performance in the bottom line and hence question whether the investment was just a waste of money. We have encountered clients that sacked their consultants because they gave no added value - but also many more that didn't know the difference and spent thousands to gain the certificate with little improvement in performance.

The result

The misconceptions and misunderstanding have delivered quite mediocre results despite numerous surveys that appeared to indicate otherwise. Admittedly it is not easy to trace successes or failure to the approach taken to ISO 9000 but quite frankly we have not come across anything in the financial press that would indicate that implementation of  ISO 9000 has improved the competitiveness of British Industry. Almost 20 years after the certification schemes were launched, many organizations continue to maintain their ISO 9000 certification not because it improves performance but because deregistration may send out the wrong signals. They appear disillusioned with ISO 9000. They blame it for their ills, they blame it for not delivering its promise and don't appear to acknowledge that it is not the standard that is to blame but the way it has been interpreted by themselves, their consultants and their auditors.

> Quality is still perceived in some quarters as the responsibility of the quality manager who seems spend a lot of time juggling paperwork.  Anything to do with ISO 9000 gets passed to the quality manager or management representative. What has happened is that quality has been pushed away from top management into a support function. The principles have not been integrated into the value system of the organization.

The intent of the ISO 9000 family of standards was to provide organizations with a framework for developing a management system that would ensure conformity with customer requirements. How is it then that they retain their certificates when they continue to process hundreds of customer complaints, maintain high reject levels and give poor service? If organizations had implemented the intent of ISO 9000, they would have no customer complaints, no rejects and a quality of service second to none. Consultants invariably focused on documentation and implementation of procedures but in many cases the culture was not compatible with the desires expounded in the quality policy. Many consultants ignored the organization's culture and were afraid to walk away from clients that were not prepared to change their culture even if they had recognized a cultural issue. Without the right culture, even the document what you do - do what you document approach will fail because people just wont keep their promises.

Unfortunately, quality has become synonymous with ISO 9000 and synonymous with procedures - we have lost sight of the product and what benefits it is supposed to bring to our customers. ISO 9000 is perceived to be a quality system - it certainly has not become synonymous with a badge of quality, otherwise quality awards would not be so popular. We used to regard "Made in Britain" as a symbol of quality. The ISO 9000 Registration  logos that adorn delivery vans and headed note paper, are also supposed to be symbols of quality but the reality is that quality is little better than before.

It would appear that by 1989 the market was receiving  messages that ISO 9000 allows the supply of rubbish and was a bureaucratic nightmare. Clearly not the intent of the Government White Paper - what had happened to the drive for competitiveness? If we go back to that 1982 White Paper, we find that its purpose was -

"to enhance the status of standards and quality assurance in the UK in order to increase the efficiency of British industry and thereby strengthen its international competitiveness"

 - Note the word EFFICIENCY - there is nothing in ISO 9001 about that, but you will find it in ISO 9004  - a standard most organizations failed to even read let alone use. We should not forget that quality assurance in those days was considered to be all activities concerned with the attainment of quality and that quality assurance systems were intended to deliver products that satisfied customers - clearly these systems failed to deliver. It is difficult to find irrefutable evidence of this but a brief look at product recalls indicates that our quality journey has hardly begun.

It is thought that in the USA alone, there are 30 million product recalls every year. Let take a look at some facts:-

• April 1996 Probably the biggest recall of all time occurred when Ford USA recalled up to 9 million vehicles that may have been equipped with a faulty ignition switch. 

• January 1998 Renault UK recalled the Clio because  electrostatic discharge may cause premature deployment of the passenger air bag. 

• August 1998 Wallis Laboratory in the UK recalled Paracetamol because of incorrect dosage instructions on the carton 

• October 1998 Ford UK recalled the  Mondeo because some vehicles had door latches which may not have been to specification. 

• July 1999 - General Motors USA recalled  1.1 million vehicles that may have had anti-lock brake problems 

• January 2000 safety approval was revoked on ARTICA life jackets because of difficulty in putting the jacket on without instructions  - one wonders how the life jackets could have received safety approval in the first place!

Impact

Another of George Santayana's observations was that:-

"History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there" 

The history about which we speak is still fresh - we did those things hence we are the best people to learn from our mistakes and take up the challenges of ISO 9000:2000. The changes will impact the approach that consultants take to their ISO 9000 assignments. However we should recognize that not all consultants exhibited the traits we have described, many have pioneered the explosion in quality education and training providing skills and knowledge in tools, techniques and methodologies for companies to use on their quality journey.

The requirements in ISO 9000:2000 are clearly more focused on the customer therefore ISO 9000 certification for those producing rubbish should cease. For both auditors and consultants alike, the focus is on business processes and away from the 20 elements. Several certification bodies are claiming that their clients need not rewrite their quality manuals - clearly the wrong message. For a start it sends out the signal that a quality system is a set of documents and secondly that the requirements of ISO 9000:2000 do not impact the business. Having seen the new approach to ISO 9000 as a breath of fresh air, we quickly became depressed when browsing an ISO 9000 web site to find people still writing procedures to match each clause of the new standard. The change is not about a new set of procedures - it is about processes and processes are not procedures. Processes deliver business outputs not pieces of paper.

The notion that ISO 9000 produces a set of books should disappear. In the transition towards a dynamic system the QMS will be positioned as an enabler of the organization's mission, delivering results that satisfy the interested parties. Hence consultants should assist their clients to make their systems effective in delivering business results.

 Re-birth

Clearly we need a re-birth, a new breed of consultant for us not to repeat the mistakes of the past - so what will make the successful ISO 9000 consultant in this new century?

It came as a shock to us to be informed by UKAS (The UK Accreditation Service) that ISO 9000 consultants are people who implement ISO 9000. Even some certification bodies take the view that the consultant's role is to produce the procedures, put the system in place.  We have to admit that in the past we have accepted assignments from clients to produce documents because they lacked the skills or the resources, but we saw ourselves playing the role of a system developer not consultants. As the registered organization will no longer be totally ignorant of ISO 9000, they may no longer need the system developer type of consultant. But what they may need is a facilitator - someone to facilitate the conversion of  their 20 element system into a dynamic, value adding management system that deliver business outputs.

Many consultants started their assignments by explaining ISO 9000 to their client which of course put the focus upon the standard and not the business. The only message that should need to be conveyed is that the quality management system is that part of your overall management system that delivers business outputs -  so lets start by examining your business processes then, if necessary we can consult the standard to see if we have missed anything. And, we will not limit our consultation to ISO 9001, we will also consult ISO 9000 and ISO 9004 to learn the language of the standard and of any new approaches we can take to improve your performance. This opens up the field of ISO 9000 consultancy. A brief examination of the new drafts will tell you that organizations may need help in marketing, process management, human resource management, problem solving and a whole range of subjects that were not in the previous ISO 9000 consultants tool kit. The new regime focuses on the business results that an effective QMS would deliver, not on the certificate. Hence the ISO 9000 consultant will need to be more conversant with critical success factors, performance indicators and performance measurement.

The ISO 9000:2000 family is based on eight quality management principles that closely match the criteria of the EFQM Excellence Model. Previously, the consultant had a very prescriptive bible to use. ISO 9000:2000 has lost much of its prescription and now expresses requirements in more general terms. The new ISO 9000 Consultant will need to understand these principles in explaining the intent of the requirement and the business benefits that will arise out of implementing them. Gone are the days when the consultant or the auditor for that matter, could use the standard as a club with which to beat the client.

ISO 9000:2000 is more focused on business performance than conformance to standards. The standard requires organizations to measure, monitor and analyse their business processes. Requirements for the setting of objectives, for planning to meet these objectives, for determination of system effectiveness and for monitoring of customer satisfaction all change the focus of the standard from conformance to performance. The QMS has to deliver results and the ISO 9000 consultant will need to understand how such systems can be re-engineered to deliver business results if they are to provide added value to their clients.

Conclusion

In all a significant and radical change.  The travelling consultant with a book of ready made procedures under his or her arm will hopefully be replaced by a true management consultant, able to offer advise and facilitate change on a wide range of issues. ISO 9000 Consultants were often perceived to be in a different league to the traditional management consultant so we should see a transition of skills and removal of the boundaries between them.

Presented to the IEE by David Hoyle in February 2000