by Dirk Dusharme
For the year 2000, expect a kinder, gentler ISO 9000 series of standards, one that applies more easily to a broader range of organizations and is easier to understand and use.
First, the three separate ISO 9001, ISO 9002 and ISO 9003 standards will be folded into one standard&emdash;ISO 9001. Feedback from users of the three standards pointed to the need for just one standard in order to allow "greater flexibility in selecting the key organizational functions appropriate to achieving customer satisfaction," said Joseph Tsiakals, a member of TC 176 (the technical committee responsible for the ISO 9000 series of standards), in a paper delivered at ASQC's Annual Quality Congress last May. The existing standards have received much criticism because of their focus on system compliance as opposed to product quality or organizational performance, something the revised ISO 9001 seeks to remedy, said Tsiakals.
To accomplish this, the existing ISO 9001 model of 20 disjointed quality management system elements will be replaced with a process model of linked quality system elements. A separate guidance document will help users choose which elements apply to their organization.
"A process model applies to any type or size of organization and directs management attention to both people and products," explained Tsiakals. "It emphasizes the understanding of requirements, adding value and obtaining measurable results. The process model emphasizes process ownership and responsibility for corrective and preventive action, providing a basis for improving processes."
Part of users' complaints of compliance vs. continuous improvement probably stemmed from the widespread use of ISO 9001 and ISO 9002 quality assurance standards as models for developing a quality management system, as opposed to ISO 9004's quality management guidelines, hinted Tsiakals. Therefore, another thrust of the revisions will be to make ISO 9001 and ISO 9004 a consistent pair, that is, to somehow incorporate or reference ISO 9004's quality management guidelines into ISO 9001.
Hopefully, this will result in companies getting more value from their registration "than just a piece of paper," says Jeff Hooper, project leader for the consistent pair of quality assurance and quality management standards of TC 176 subcommittee 2. "In the past, many organizations took the requirements of ISO 9001 and did only what they barely had to do to satisfy those requirements," explains Hooper. "There was ISO 9001 and ISO 9004, and there were virtually no customers who used them both together in a substantive way."
Three standards or one, consistent or inconsistent, by the year 2001 we will know whether the world's most ubiquitous standard has ushered in a new millennium of quality or just more certificates.
Most people estimate that they waste at least one hour every working day due to poor organization, according to a recent survey conducted by Video Arts and The TrainingNet. In the survey, 150 North American business professionals reflected on their own time-management habits and the organizational skills of their supervisors.
Only 16 percent
gave themselves an "A" for organization.
Ninety-three
percent agreed that people must first be able to organize themselves
before they can begin to organize others.
To-do lists are
the No. 1 time-management aid for professionals, followed by Post-it
Notes, diaries and electronic calendars, wall charts and reminders on
home answering machines.
Eighteen
percent say their desk is "perfectly organized," 20 percent say it is
"buried in paper."
Fifty percent
guess that it would take at least five hours to get really organized.
On Nov. 16, Litton Systems Canada Limited Quality System Registrars was named International Quality System Registrars and separated from Litton.
The change was caused by Litton's decision to cease offering ISO 9000 and QS-9000 registration services and focus on its core business of supplying systems to the aerospace and defense industry.
IQSR has been reassessed and carries with it the Standards Council of Canada and the Registrar Accreditation Board accreditation, including QS-9000 qualification.
ook for some changes to the 1997 edition of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. To better reflect the criteria's use as the standard for performance and business excellence, NIST has renamed, reordered and redesigned sections of the criteria, says Harry Hertz, director of the Office of Quality Programs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
"But the foundation on which the criteria were built&emdash;helping companies enhance their competitiveness by delivering ever-improving value to customers and improving overall company performance&emdash;remains as firm and solid today as it was in 1988," emphasizes Hertz.
The most obvious change was to the name of the award criteria booklet. Rather than "Award Criteria," the booklet is now called "Criteria for Performance Excellence" to reflect that the criteria are much more than a set of rules for an award contest, according to NIST.
In addition to the name change, all categories, except leadership, have been reordered or renamed to show that all of a company's actions should lead to business results and to better depict the relationship among categories. The 1997 categories and their point values are leadership (110), strategic planning (80), customer and market focus (80), information and analysis (80), human resource development and management (100), process management (100) and business results (450).
The points for the business results category were increased from 250 to 450 (out of 1,000) to reflect the increased value assigned to this revised category.
Other changes include the number of criteria items reduced from 24 to 20, the number of areas to address reduced from 52 to 30, and the number of item notes reduced from 114 to 45.
For more information, contact the NIST Office of Quality Programs at (301) 975-2036, fax (301) 948-3716 or e-mail oqp@nist.gov.
Earnest W. Deavenport Jr., chairman and CEO of Eastman Chemical Co., was elected president of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Foundation at the foundation's annual meeting in December. The meeting was held in conjunction with ceremonies attended by President Clinton to recognize the 1996 Baldrige Award winners.
Deavenport became chairman and CEO of Eastman Chemical on Jan. 1, 1994, after guiding its spin-off from Eastman Kodak Co. Previously he was president of Eastman Chemical.
In June 1995, Deavenport completed a one-year term as chairman of the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the trade association of U.S. chemical companies.
If you want to increase productivity at your workplace, invest wisely in your employees' health, say researchers from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Absenteeism and reduced at-work performance cost society billions of dollars each year. But for some illnesses, a relatively small investment in employee health can quickly result in improved productivity.
For instance, researchers estimate a yearly loss of more than $22 billion due to reduced at-work performance and absenteeism for employees with chronic depression, with the loss split equally between the two. However, workers suffering from chronic depression improved their at-work performance substantially after only four weeks of treatment with anti-depressants.
The implication for employers is that they can significantly reduce the cost of illness by investing in increased education programs and by providing appropriate diagnosis and treatments to workers who might suffer chronic depression, say researchers.
Further study continues on the relationship between various health problems, such as depression, migraine, carpal tunnel syndrome and hypertension, and their effect on productivity. In addition, researchers will look at measurable differences in productivity based on the specific medications taken for an illness. For instance, employees who take sedating antihistamines for allergies are less productive than workers who take the more expensive nonsedating types. This proves that the less expensive treatment isn't necessarily the most cost-effective one.
Researchers hope that these studies will help employers target health care benefits toward the health care issues that have the most impact on corporate productivity.
In order to fund its Baldrige-based state quality award, the Delaware Quality Consortium came up with an interesting scheme. Rather than ask organizations to give money to support the administration of the Delaware Quality Award, Delaware Quality Consortium board member Kurt Reinhart asks them for a loan.
"I thought people might be more receptive if I said, 'I don't want your money, just the use of it,' " says Reinhart, who came up with the idea about three years ago.
It works like this: An organization wishing to support the Delaware Quality Award donates money to the consortium with the agreement that should the consortium ever cease to exist, the money will go back to the donor. The consortium puts the money into a trust fund with investments in conservative investment vehicles. The interest from those investments funds the award's administration.
The consortium currently has $450,000 invested&emdash;$150,000 from the state and $300,000 from a private donor (the state required the consortium to come up with two-to-one matching funds). The interest provides enough to just "squeak by," says Reinhart. The goal is to have $2 million invested, which would provide enough income to administer the award and pay a full-time executive director.
For further information on the Delaware Quality Consortium, call (302) 678-6279.
North American automakers and their suppliers can cut their costs by an estimated $1 billion annually&emdash;or an average of $70 per car in a 15-million vehicle year&emdash;by improving communication throughout the automotive supply chain, according to the Automotive Industry Action Group. The AIAG recently announced the results of its Manufacturing Assembly Pilot project, which examined methods to improve supply chain communication.
"When we started the MAP project, we found that it typically takes from four to six weeks for material release information to reach the bottom of the supply chain," says Thomas Hoy, executive director of the AIAG. "What's worse, the information that does make it eventually down the supply chain is often distorted and truncated."
This is because beyond the first-tier suppliers, information is often communicated via fax or mail and then re-entered into each supplier's computer database (if they have one) by hand, explains Hoy.
By utilizing electronic data interchange and altering internal business practices within MAP pilot participants (the Big Three automakers, seat-manufacturer Johnson Controls and 12 second- and third-tier suppliers), the four to six-week delay was cut to 11 days. Hoy expects to get the process down to one day per tier. MAP results also included 58-percent reduction of lead time, 20-percent improvement in inventory turns and 72-percent reduction in order error rates.
Based on early indications of MAP, the Big Three issued a joint letter mandating that a common set of EDI requirements be met by suppliers.
http://www.aiag.org
How quickly are companies responding to customers? How many calls are resolved on first contact? What percent of calls are being transferred? How long are customers kept on hold? Answers to these and other questions regarding customer service departments can be found in the results of a recent reader survey in Customer Service Newsletter, a monthly publication from New York-based company The Customer Service Group.
Respondents were separated by industry: manufacturing (46%), service (24%), distribution (14%) and retail/other (16%).
On average, customer service representatives for manufacturing industries took the fewest calls (265 per week), while reps in retail/other took the most calls (690 per week). Customers calling distribution organizations spent an average of 11.4 minutes per call. Other industries averaged three to four minutes per call.
Believe it or not, the average time spent on hold was less than three minutes across all industries. Complaints only constitute about 12 percent of the calls.
For more information, contact The Customer Service Group at (212) 228-0246.
Satisfying customers won't keep you ahead of the competition, according to a new study by The Conference Board.
The study, based on a survey of managers in 113 U.S. and European firms (57 manufacturers and 56 service firms), finds that the need to retain customers and attract new ones by providing "value" is equally important.
A third of survey respondents say their effort to create customer value has already helped them to maintain their competitive position, and more than a quarter claim to have gained competitive advantage.
A majority of the participants, all of whom currently have a customer value effort, believe their program is producing results, especially in retaining customers (67%), building long-term relationships (64%) and attracting new customers (56%).
Data collection is key in creating customer value, says The Conference Board.
Armed with customer data, three-quarters of the firms reorganized their structure to enhance decision making. Ninety percent made changes to their business processes. Eighty percent reported reengineering, and 90 percent overhauled their human resource practices to align them with their customer value program.
A telephone call may be the only view some of your customers get of your organization. Be SMART in how you come across, says Nancy Friedman, president of The Telephone "Doctor."
Smile&emdash;Keep a mirror near your
telephone, and take a peek to see
how your callers "see" you.
Monogram the call -- Know the name? Use the name. Announce who you are when you pick up the telephone. Use the caller's name as soon as they give it to you. It helps you to remember it and builds rapport.
Attitude -- You need a great one. Coming to work in a bad mood isn't fair to your customers. Take an attitude check every morning to start your day off great.
Rapid response -- Not returning a phone call is like not using your turn signal. It's just plain rude. If you don't have time to make the call, have someone call on your behalf.
Thank you, please and you're welcome -- These words are not used often enough. Include them in all phone conversations.
