ISO 9000, crap or good.

RACERAL · #1 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 05:59 AM

Our business has been ISO certified since the early 90's. I have always thought it was a crappy system and a costly one at that. I think we should dump it.
What say you?

Speedysnake · #2 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 06:52 AM

I've been with Companies that won the Deming Award, had ISO 9001 certification, and followed the 6 sigma quality plan. I think they're all gimmicks, but if the "certification" helps sales, who's to arghue??

RACERAL · #3 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 07:40 AM

Thats the question, does it really help sales?

VRM · #4 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 08:46 AM

I went along on a few sales calls as the representative engineer. Questions were asked about it once once or twice. I did not think it was a very impressive system either, but with human nature tending toward laziness the first thing that usually goes out the window is the process. And most of us engineer types hate things that get in our way of actually engineering something. But, some sort of consistent process needs to be followed if all the groups in a company are going to work together.

Steve

KeithBrown · #5 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 11:39 AM

In my prior life, I was a "Certified Quality Manager" and was the Management Representative and responsible for implementing ISO 9000 in 1997 at a 1500 person manufacturer. While I can agree there is some usefulness for most of these types of programs (ISO 9000, ISO 14000, TQM, SPC, Sick Sigma, whatever), they are too often overused and over hyped.

BTW - We dumped the ISO 9000 certification last year as we shifted our company focus from consumer electronics manufacturing to value added (ie: custom engineered industrial products) and no one yet has ever cared or asked us about ISO 9000 in this segment.

I personally don't miss the bureaucratic crap that goes along with any company wide system.

wtm442 · #6 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 11:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RACERAL

Our business has been ISO certified since the early 90's. I have always thought it was a crappy system and a costly one at that. I think we should dump it.
What say you?

Depends on who are your major customers. If you do business with a lot of big companies in Europe, you will lose some business.

Silverback51 · #7 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wtm442

Depends on who are your major customers. If you do business with a lot of big companies in Europe, you will lose some business.

That's just what I was going to say. Some large businesses will not deal with companies that are not ISO 9000 certified or at least in the certification process.

Wayne Maybury · #8 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 01:52 PM

I have found that far too much "stuff" gets dumped into the ISO system making it become slow and cumbersome as changes take time to implement.

ISO will tell you where you screwed up but it will not guarantee that you will not screw up the same way again.

Wayne

KeithBrown · #9 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 02:51 PM

I will be interested in seeing if the latest (2001) SA 8000 standard ever makes it to be the next greatest ISO 9000/ISO 14000, etc.

SA 8000 is a Social Accountability standard that even the boys in Geneva want to add to as the next ISO standard. I am sure Ozone Al & crew would be proud.

RACERAL · #10 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 07:28 PM

We are doing the "Market based Management" concept these days.. Our company owner Charles Koch , demands this.
Under MBM concept, I think ISO is out of line and I am just trying to gather some info from other to help trash it.

chopper · #11 (**permalink**) 08-25-2007, 05:50 PM

IMHO, ISO 9000 is pretty worthless. The certification merely says that you follow your written company procedures accurately. It says nothing about the validity of the procedures or about whether the end product is any good; it just says that you have procedures in place to produce whatever product you turn out, and that you follow those procedures. The basic idea is to give your customers and subcontractors a warm fuzzy feeling that you actually are doing what you agreed to do in the contract without cutting corners.

trularin · #12 (**permalink**) 08-26-2007, 06:23 AM

I work in this environment, it is a pain, but the clients look for us to have the certs for QA and reliability.

I am not sure we would drop this. It has been integrated into our engineering system.

63mercury · #13 (**permalink**) 08-26-2007, 05:55 PM

Last July I retired from a co that went the ISO 9000 route for 5 years and dumped it as too costly and went to customer satisfaction, timely delivery,and keeping all changes up to date and it seems to work just as well, the customers are world wide and have had no loss of business. The building downturn has hurt them for now. Oh by the way I was one of 5 QC people responsable for making sure ALL measuring equipment was accurate on a monthly cycle, when ISO was thrown out the tools were never checked unless there was a problem, and 4 people were out of jobs. Just my .02 worth.

Jay Little · #14 (**permalink**) 08-28-2007, 06:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chopper

IMHO, ISO 9000 is pretty worthless. The certification merely says that you follow your written company procedures accurately. It says nothing about the validity of the procedures or about whether the end product is any good; it just says that you have procedures in place to produce whatever product you turn out, and that you follow those procedures. The basic idea is to give your customers and subcontractors a warm fuzzy feeling that you actually are doing what you agreed to do in the contract without cutting corners.

Thanks for the info, I always wondered ISO 9000 was about. There's no way the place I work could become compliant.