Excluding Design from Scope - Software Company

[Marc]

Subject: Re: CD-C Update /../Andrews/Dillon/Donville
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 13:08:05 -0600
From: ISO Standards Discussion

From: Jeff Donville
Subject: Re: CD-C Update /../Andrews/Dillon/Donville

> Michael Dillon wrote
>
> We are primarily a Software company, but we also sell Hardware to accompany
> our software. The software sales, testing, commercialization, shipping,
> purchasing, contracts, etc.. is included in the scope. However, the
> software design activity was never included in the ISO activity. We also
> have a very very small part of our company that does Hardware Design and
> that very small design activity is in the scope, therefore we have a 9001
> certificate even though our huge design activity of software is not in the
> scope.
>
> For Clarity: We purposely excluded Design of Software from our scope of
> certification when we first became certified. Can we continue to do this
> in the future? If so, are their any re-percussions as the result of ISO
> 9001/2000
>
> Michael
--------snippo-------
Michael,

It seems to me that the spirit and intent of ISO 9000 is not to "make" anybody do anything. Rather, I interpret the intent to be to provide a framework which can benefit any organization doing anything. If your software design/development is not currently covered there is no need to cover it, but in your case I would make sure that when you say you are certified, that you qualify the scope of the certification to potential and real customers.

My company actually created a separate company, which we will be treating as a subcontractor, which does all the PC-oriented R&D for the products we offer. Our Quality Manual is explicit about the relationship and scope. We will, of course, have to provide procedures for approving them as a subcontractor and validating and verifying their work. I can't see that requirement changing under the 2000 revisions.

We currently envision some sort of slower or less comprehensive parallel-track quality effort for the R&D aimed at prepping them for a full-blown quality effort later on.

Jeffrey T. Donville