A common perception of the requirement 'continual
improvement' contained within the ISO9001 Standard (8.5.1)
is that in some way it relates to an improvement of product
or service. Some more serious thought might reveal this to
be a misinterpretation, as the document is not a product or
service specification, but a system for controlling the
quality of the product or service through the output. Title
- ' ISO9001:2000 Quality management systems -
Requirements'. So, in so far as the Standard relates to
the organisations' output, it defines a control and
assurance system that should provide a measure of
conformance for the outgoing product. The improvement
requirement refers to the manner in which this control is
affected.
Herein lies the real problem with the ISO9000 series, as it
has little to do with management in the normally accepted
definition of that word, and certainly nothing to do with
business management, which is about efficiency,
effectiveness and costs. Pressured into an ISO9000 regime
by (in the UK) a government sponsored initiative intended
to improve the nation's international image for quality,
organisations large and small adopted the standard and
registration in the belief that this alone would enhance
their status in the market place. At the beginning this was
true, but when competitors were similarly equipped with
their registered status certificate, and none of them
demonstrably better than the other, buyers returned to
their original practice of buying against criteria that did
not include ISO9000 registration. Clearly the Continuing
Improvement aspect of the document was either a myth,
wasn't being implemented, or didn't relate to what the
customer wanted.
It seems obvious that if a product or service has achieved
an acceptable standard of 'quality' (whatever that might
mean to the purchaser), any further improvement that is to
be seen by the purchaser will be in the areas of cost and
availability. These are not features that concern the
ISO9000 fraternity; however, they do impact on the
customer's perception of that product or service.
Logically, they also impact on the task of Sales and
Marketing people who have the responsibility of persuading
potential customers of the uniqueness and superiority of
their product. Here we find the Standard at its weakest and
Continuing Improvement a sham.
If an organisation were to adopt a different approach to
the management of the business, to the management of
Quality if you prefer, and that approach directly addressed
the cost of generating and delivering the organisations
product or service, THAT would result in improvement, and
probably continual improvement.
Why would this be different to the laboriously developed
ISO9000 management system? For the simple reason that every
top management team understands one language - money. A
rationally constituted cost measurement scheme would
include 'error free' cost estimates, plus actual
measurement of costs incurred due to a failure to achieve
the error free working. We call this the cost of
non-conformance, or perhaps more acceptably 'Transaction
Costs'. If executive managers could be persuaded to
abandon ISO9000 theory in favour of the collection of
honest cost data such as this, business would - overnight,
become more profitable because of the actions they would
take - or have taken for them - to rectify the clear
overspend found by this approach.
Generally this will not happen. Not due to any difficulty
or inability to collect this data, but an inbuilt belief by
virtually everyone not familiar with Eastern Cultures that
error & failure is an inevitable consequence of human
endeavour.
In the meantime, managers and their acolytes continue to
hang onto the support strap ISO9000, firm in the belief
that a documented system and its certificate will - as with
the Wizard of Oz - be an adequate substitute for objective
thought.
----------------------------------------------------
Meon Consulting, founded by Ed Bones, was formed to assist
clients with managing their businesses in a manner
compliant with ISO9001/14001. Ed had earlier held a number
of senior posts with Hi-Tech companies in the UK, Europe
and the USA. He has written and lectured on full range of
topics on quality improvement and TQM.
//http://www.rent-an-auditor.co.uk.To obtain your FREE
Presentation please visit
http://www.rent-an-auditor.co.uk/contactus.html
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