Quote Originally Posted by skeptic
Is ISO 9000 garbage? At least the concept behind it isn't. For those who don't know what it is, it is the result of an International Standards Organization program for manufacturers.
This is the largest misconception of ISO's purposes. BY ISO's own figures manufacturers account for less than 25% of all business conducted in the world. And slightly less in North America. Truthfully, ISO was designed with service providers in mind, not tangible products and manufacturers. There were already various QSM programs in most developed countries which may or may not have adequately addressed "product and process quality management". What ISO did was apply a few of those concepts in within the framework of organizational goveranance and design to apply them to the service industries. It spread faster among manufacturers due to some bad marketing and poor education, but ISO turned it into positive and stole alot of business from QSM programs. In essence, ISO's philosophy is backwards from quality management. It does not examine the end product so much as each individual process along the way. ISO targets throughput, not output. By definition, if the throughput is perfect, the product should be as well. This does not always hold true.
You are correct in your "do what you say" bit though...that's the infamous slogan we preached to all the companies. The theoretical problem with ISO, which we are working on now is that there are positive and negative synergies. Organizational integration generally forces many compromises. To maximize each departments performance for example, often requires compromising anothers.
For some reason, car dealerships were the most prevalent businesses where this held true, and are the focus of many of our models.
Common sense says to do what makes the most money and keeps the most people happy. But it's hard to create a guideline or policy that people can apply. Too many business aren't thinking.
ISO's been rather successful at "forcing" companies with ISO certification to only outsource, or deal with other ISO certified companies...great business building for us.
Here's why ISO is garbage too...once we teach all these companies how to run themselves, they stop paying us and continue to use our practices and advice...we never saw that one coming.
Actually, since I'm talking about my employer, ISO is great when used properly...just too often it causes people to stop thinking for themselves.
And it's funny that people still think of us as a "standards organization" or something idealistic and pure like the United Nations is suppose to be...we're a business for all intents and purposes.