Certifying Body: Partner or Police Force?

The benefits of continuous improvement for its own sake

Wed, 10/07/2015 - 15:43

In my previous article, “Is Poor Quality ISO 9001’s Fault?” I shared the example of the chairman of a large company who ridiculed ISO 9001, saying, “Even the municipal office of this city is ISO 9001-certified. And we all know how bad the municipality is. I don’t believe ISO 9001 can do my business any good.” The chairman was equally severe in his views about other quality methodologies and models. His comment was really about quality management systems or practices as a whole, not about ISO 9001 alone.

ADVERTISEMENT

I also wrote about the discussion on LinkedIn’s ISO 9001 group, where more than 150 responses expressed members’ views about the chairman’s comment.

We saw in the last article how the largest number of respondents seem to think that poor quality is the fault of the organization—particularly its leaders. Here, we’ll look at some of the other categories of responses.

 …

Want to continue?
Log in or create a FREE account.
By logging in you agree to receive communication from Quality Digest. Privacy Policy.

Comments

I have been a part of ISO 9001 in two different companies with two different external auditors. I am a big proponent of lean processes and controls and accountability but ISO in practice is none of these things. ISO is only good for making sure your paperwork is right and paperwork is a waste of time. Yes you need written standard work, yes you need a documented calibration process but there is much wasted time and money that goes into unnceccesary paperwork and bureaucracy. You stated "“Quality managers often turn quality into an exercise in documentation and bureaucracy,” says one respondent. “This is giving quality management and ISO 9001 a bad name.”" I disagree it is not the quality managers that are doing this, it is the customers that drive the ISO certification which is just a useless bureaucracy. I was employed at a 3rd company that practiced lean and standard work with excellance and they would have never passed an ISO audit but they were much better at lean than either of the other two certified companies. ISO is a joke b/c I can pass an audit without being lean or I can be lean w/o passing an audit. For the record I do not think API is any better.

My perspectives about the timely article and survey findings:

  • Processes should be scoped and mapped by the Process Owner (ISO 9000.1:1994)

  • Processes will then have Procedures 'documented' to enable them to be performed

  • ISO 9001:2015 requires the organizations processes to be so defined and it specifically states a requirement that an organizations management system should not reflect the Clauses of the Standard nor its Terminology

  • Should organizations 'document' their ISO 9001, 14001, 55001, 45001, AS9100C, ISO/TS 16949 etc. systems by the headings or clauses of these standards then you have about 18 months to re-document them under your processes, conduct Internal Audits and complete all by the 3 year transition period for ISO 9001 and ISO 14001

  • ISO has a Guidebook that is most useful in developing a process-based approach to Integrating Management Systems and will be reviewed in 2016 – it is called “The Integrated Use of Management Systems Standards”.

  • Annex SL in the revised ISO 9001:2015 only seeks to align the clauses for commonality and will be the based for so structuring ISO Standards. Annex SL is NOT the means or format to so document one or multiple Management Systems into an Integrated System, neither is PAS99 either.

  • The falling popularity / Google Searchers rate of Lean and more so Six Sigma (the Trade and Service Mark of Motorola's Quality Program not statistically correct +/-6 ST DEV aka Walter Shewhart's calculation and formula for Control Charts - that is another argument my colleague Dr Anthony Burns is more qualified to address) is because such process-based initiatives normally decouple from their ISO 9001 QMS

  • This is usually because such Processes are not identified aka Clause Based non-Value Adding Quality Systems which are sadly certified by the CB's as that was what the organization presented and probably as the article finds, the QMS adds no business value)

  • Any Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, BPR, Jishuken, 8D, Kaizen, Quality Circle, TPM, PDCA, PDSA intervention needs to start with the Processes which should have so located in a Management System if so documented by its Processes, so that when the improvements are so made and audited change and downstream impacts are / validated, back into the Procedures and then within the linked Processes - see APQC PCF as it has a few Industry Process Frameworks as a start

  • All Business Excellence Models and the revised ISO 9001:2015 7 Quality Principles have Processes at their heart

  • Any ERP like SAP has Processes likewise Balanced Scorecard the “Process perspective”

  • Likewise, so should all Management Systems.  Just go and pick-up any Certified Quality or other Management System and see if the Contents page has the clauses of the relevant standard that System seeks to meet those requirements. Sadly, it will be about +/- 2 Sigma in statistical terms of course. So if they are so documented, that is what the CB’s will audit, even if they do not add value to the business and other interested parties / stakeholders

  • It is anticipated that ISO 9001:2015 revision will usher in an exciting time for the Quality and ISO Community to make themselves more relevant for organizations (even Local Governments), CB's and the Customers they expect to see Big Q (Juran) now more relevant for Interested Parties.

    Michael

Thank you for the valuable comments. You may also wish to post the same comments in the ongoing Linkedin discussion which is the basis of this article. The link to the Linkedin discussion is given in the article. This way, your comments would reach an additional audience, and benefit more people.

Add new comment