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ISO
9000 is a family of international
standards - they are voluntary
standards only made mandatory by
customers when invoked in
contracts. Whether they are bad
for business depends on how you
treat them.
If
you treat them as a prescription
for what you have to do, ignore
the purpose for which they were
designed, foolishly pursue ISO
9000 registration when you don't
have to and accede to the whim of
every third party auditor - you
deserve what you get!
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Why
would organizations continue to do
these things if they gained no
value from them?
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Why
did they not kick out their
auditors and their consultants?
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Why
did they judge results by whether
they got the badge when in
everything else they did they
judged results by their impact on
the bottom line?
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Why
were these people willing partners
in the coercion?
The
ISO 9000:2000 family of standards
is different from its
predecessors. The primary
motivation for the change has been
to move organizations further
forward towards Business
Excellence, providing guidance
that will enable them to achieve
sustained success. The standard
represents a fundamental change in
intent, direction and
approach. The sad thing is
that if the standard
is perceived as not having changed
significantly, it will continue to
wreak havoc as it will be
interpreted and used in the same
inappropriate way it has been for
the last 14 yrs.
As is often said, “If you
continue to do the things that you
have always done you will continue
to get what you always got!”
By
looking at ISO 9000 as a framework
upon which can be built a
successful organization, rather
than as a narrow set of minimum
requirements, significant benefits
can be gained.
In
response to ISO 9000:1994 most
organizations only used the
assessment standards ISO 9001,
9002 and 9003. They paid no
attention to ISO 9004. They
ignored the principles in ISO 8402
and created documentation that
focused only on those requirements
that were addressed by the
assessment standard. The belief
was that by documenting what you
do and doing what you document,
product quality would be achieved.
As some of the principal factors
affecting quality of output were
missing, mere conformity with the
clauses of ISO 9001 did not stop
organizations avoiding quality
problems. The intent of the 87
& 94 versions was clearly to
create documented systems. The
documentation was intended as a
means of demonstrating capability
in order that customers would be
assured of product quality, but in
practice it did nothing of the
kind primarily because the real
purpose for the documentation was
lost along the way. The 94 family
lacked sufficient guidance and led
to organizations failing to
understand that quality could not
be assured simply by documenting
procedures.
A
change in culture was required but
it was found that certification
could be obtained simply by
producing a manual and a set of
procedures that bore little
resemblance to the way the
organization was managed so why
change when you don't have to?
This
narrow view of quality management
has now been swept aside by ISO
9000:2000 and in its place it
encourages organizations to:
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Determine
the needs and expectations of
customers and other interested
parties;
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Establish
policies, objectives and a work
environment necessary to motivate
the organization to satisfy these
needs;
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Design,
resource and manage a system of
interconnected processes necessary
to implement the policy and attain
the objectives;
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Measure
and analyse the adequacy,
efficiency and effectiveness of
each process in fulfilling its
purpose and objectives and;
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Pursue
the continual improvement of the
system from an objective
evaluation of its performance.
I
challenge anyone to deny that this
is the real intent
of the family of standards and
that doing any one of these is bad
for business.
The
family of standards has been based
on 8 key principles - principles
which even John Seddon would find
it hard to deny lead to successful
businesses. Within the
requirements you will find -
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Customer
focus through determining needs
and expectations of customers
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Leadership
though policies, objectives and
work environment
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Involvement
of people by managing a system of
processes rather than functions
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An
application of the process
approach through linking policy,
objectives, processes, measures,
results and improvement
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A
systems approach through the interconnection of processes
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Continual
improvement from the results of
the measurement and analysis of
processes
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A
factual approach to decision
making through the objective
evaluation of process measurement
data
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A
focus on mutual beneficial
supplier relationships through determining
needs and expectations of other
interested parties and the setting
of policies and objective to
satisfy these needs.
For
the designers and managers of the
organization's management system
these principles are the key to a
successful implementation of ISO
9000.
For
the auditors they are the key to
transforming the way quality
system audits are conducted. With
a little thought the lack of
application of one or more of
these principles will be found to
be at the root cause of most of
the organization's problems.
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The
intent is that organizations
design and manage their processes
effectively to achieve corporate
objectives, not that they create
functional silos that compete for
resources.
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The
intent is that organizations
choose the right things to do
based on an objective analysis of
the environment in which they
operate, not slavishly follow
procedures that serve no practical
purpose.
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The
intent is that management create
an environment in which people
will be motivated, not create
bureaucratic systems of
documentation that stifle
initiative and creativity.
The
family of standards has to be used
intelligently by customers,
managers, auditors and
consultants. An intelligent use of
the standard would result in:-
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Viewing
the quality policy as the
organization's values that guide
it to achieve its purpose and
mission rather than a motherhood
statement with no connection with
reality
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Viewing
the quality objectives as the
corporate objectives rather than a
set of tasks for the quality
department to carry out
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Viewing
the system as the means by which
the organization implements it
policy and achieves it objectives
rather than a set of documents
that are always out of date.
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Viewing
audits as a means to determine
whether the organization has the
capability to achieve its
objectives rather than on
conformity to requirements and
procedures
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Viewing
performance in terms of the extent
to which the needs and
expectations of all interested
parties are met rather than on the
number of customer complaints,
nonconformities and audit findings
We
can find all these concepts within
the ISO 9000:2000 family of
standards if we take a step back
from them and make the linkages. It is plain to see
that these things are good for
business so why would anyone not
want to do them?
So
I contend that ISO 9000:2000 is not bad
for business - but it will be if
we treat it as we did the 1994
version.
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