10 Tips on Writing
for ISO 9000

by Gary Blake, Ph.D.

1. While preparing to meet ISO 9000 standards, write an action plan listing every activity that must be accomplished along the way.

Before starting to pursue ISO 9001, the quality manager at Symbol Technologies wrote an action plan of 267 steps-that was just for creating the quality manual. The plan listed every task, the people responsible for it and an estimated time to complete the task. The first task, "List all procedures that are associated with each clause," was estimated to take a week.

This type of global thinking is also exemplified by the quality manager at Dynepco, who sent out a long memo to his staff about achieving certification for ISO 9002. The memo, part strategy and part pep talk, listed 16 steps toward achieving certification. The first four are:
Obtain management commitment.
Appoint a management representative to lead the process.
Form a steering committee or team that includes hourly people and has all areas represented.
Educate the team about the ISO 9000 registration process.

2. Write ISO 9000 procedures that are specific but do not handcuff your people in completing their work.

If you were writing, for example, a procedure on how a report was to be bound, you might write: "Put all sheets in a 'Clear-Vue' see-through report cover and thread a black spine over the left side of the cover to bind the report."

But what if you run out of "Clear-Vue" covers? Are others just as good? And what about those black spines? Would a green one make a big difference? Perhaps you could write: "Put all sheets in a see-through report cover and thread a spine over the left side of the cover to bind the report."

3. If any of those who must write ISO 9000 procedures are inexperienced writers, have them create flowcharts describing their tasks.

While flowcharts are not a substitute for narrative in an ISO 9000 procedure, they can help procedure writers explain what they do. Many engineers think visually and it's easier for them to do a flowchart than to construct a paragraph or even a series of bullet points.

Flowcharts should be easy to read and contain less than eight steps. Try to fashion a set of procedures based on the flowchart.

Streamline procedures by bulleting parallel items, especially those that start with verbs. Often, there's no need to put procedures in paragraph form. For example, instead of a paragraph filled with items separated by commas or semicolons, break out of the paragraph by putting in a colon after that announces a break from the prose; then put in a series of bullet points to line up the thoughts for the reader.

4. Keep your ISO 9000 quality policy manual to less than 40 pages.

The quality policy manual is sometimes thought of as pointing to or referencing lower-level documents. The quality manual is not the place to go into detail about who does what or how things are done. It is a place to set policy.

The quality manual should contain no proprietary material. In fact, it should be written as if it were to be given to customers and, in some cases, competitors. If the manual has more than 40 pages, it's probably going into more depth than necessary or is redundant. At that point, the manual will start to resemble a list of procedures or work instructions.

5. Model your quality manual after the ISO 9000 standards.

The topic order in the ISO 9000 standard should guide you in organizing your quality policy manual. Even if you have a manual partially written, it's best to start again, mirroring the topics and order of the particular ISO 9000 standard for which your company is trying to become certified. By making the manual's topics the same as the standard's, you help potential auditors follow your thoughts and make sure you've covered the required topics.

6. Make quality manuals easily auditable and maintainable.

Making a quality manual auditable means making it easy to read, easy to reference and easy to reread. By reflecting the ISO 9000 standards, the manual becomes easier to audit quickly.

Other format issues to consider include wide margins (a lot of white space makes reading easy on the eyes); consistent spacing (helps highlight what's important); consistent numbering (shows readers which topics are subsets of others); large, serif typefaces (helps readability, save italics for emphasis only); correct capitalization; and title blocks that include the company name, document name, revision or signature line, page number and document number.

Title blocks help you maintain your manual by making it easy to see where revised pages fit and by telling you the last time a document was revised.

7. Keep documentation concise.

Don't throw in the kitchen sink. Like every other type of writing, documentation is selective and should contain the minimum amount necessary to convey the idea.

Avoid redundancies like, "All quality systems, current and new, used . . ." Knock out "current and new." Here's another redundancy: "The sales division will completely document all the processes that affect the customer-supplier relationship between Acme and its customers." Leave out "customer-supplier."

Avoid wordy expressions (e.g., "on an annual basis") and the obvious (e.g., "all staff reporting directly or indirectly will support this policy.")

Avoid clichés and puffery such as, "Quality is the basis of our corporate culture" or "We will produce perfect products and services every time, on time."

8. Make documentation self-explanatory and authoritative.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said you should write not just so that you'll be understood but so that you cannot be misunderstood.

To do this, you must delete any hedging. Get rid of words like "basically," "perhaps," "under certain circumstances" and "in most cases."

Here's a vague and weak purpose statement: "To assign the responsibilities and authorities of the various departments within the company."

Here's the sharper, more authoritative version: "To assure individual department compliance with quality management system guidelines for managing responsibilities."

9. Use hierarchical, easy-to-follow numbering systems for sections and subsections.
Stay consistent:

1.0 PURPOSE
2.0 SCOPE
3.0 DEFINITIONS
The headings are all capital. Subtopics are indented and line up underneath the headings:
3.0 DEFINITIONS
3.1 Document-The original media that conveys information or proof of an activity, task or procedure.
3.2 Standard Operating Procedure
3.3 Process Sheet

10. When trying to explain your tasks to a layperson, ask yourself, "How would I explain this to a very bright child?"

When talking to children, you automatically know to boil down difficult-to-grasp concepts. The same idea should apply when circulating documents to people who are not versed in your technical field. Don't expect that they "know it." They may not. They often need help from you in forming a mental image of the product or process you are trying to describe.

Avoid vague phrases such as, "To ensure that the requirements between ACME Co. and its customers are effectively communicated . . ."

Which requirements? Contractual? Procedures? Don't make the reader guess. "Use the correct word and not," as Mark Twain once said, "its second cousin."

About the author . . .

Gary Blake, Ph.D., is director of The Communication Workshop, a consulting firm that offers on-site and public seminars on writing for ISO 9000. For more information about seminars, call (516) 767-9590, fax (516) 883-4006, e-mail garyblake@aol.com or write to the Communication Workshop, Dept. ISO, 130 Shore Road, Port Washington, New York, NY 11050.

1995 Gary Blake, Ph.D. All rights reserved.