Discontinuing ISO 9001 certification

[the47guy]

As far as dropping the ISO certification, I can understand why a company may want to. I am assuming that the organization has performed a full analysis determining pros and cons. The only thing I might add (and I'm doing so knowing absolutely nothing about the organization) is that if said organization is in the United States and ever wants to get on as a prime contractor for the US Government, a lot of Request for Proposals (RFP) are being dropped with a requirement of maintaining certification to an ISO standard or AS standard depending on the scope.

I only state this as a friend of mine was having the same debate within his organization that is in the aerospace industry and decided it was worth the money to retain certification in the hopes of one day competing.

 

[JoShmo]

I am all for dropping certification as it tends to be a costly, burdensome waste of time.

Do you have some examples of this? Is it comapred to something else like financial audits?

 

[Golfman25]

Do you have some examples of this? Is it comapred to something else like financial audits?

There are plenty of examples - Mrs. Shrew gave one. Quality isn't a piece of ISO paper on the wall. It's a way of doing business. The "paper" just adds time and expense.

And your mention of financial audits is spot on. There are thousands of small companies who don't get audited by their accounting firms. They get a compiled financial statement and go from there. They don't need anything more. No big deal.

 

[Crusader]

Has anyone experienced discontinuing their certification? After deliberating over the issue our company has decided to drop from ISO certification. What now? How long has anyone allowed registrar logos to continue on business forms before destroying them? How about banners? What are others doing in this instance?

I have a sneaky suspicion that my employer is headed this way...

 

[Crusader]

It has been decided this past week, we ae continuing to "2015"!
And I have to implement 5S company wide at the same time. And go thru training too. No pressure. Just get it all done. :mg:

 

[somashekar]

Has anyone experienced discontinuing their certification? After deliberating over the issue our company has decided to drop from ISO certification. What now? How long has anyone allowed registrar logos to continue on business forms before destroying them? How about banners? What are others doing in this instance?

Very well you can.
Just be sure that the certification reason was not a business reason.
Ask your CB how they want to manage this, with a plan date from when you want to drop.
Within that date, be sure to clean up all your ISO certification information and CB logo use on all media.

 

[Marc]

5S - Workplace Organization

... And I have to implement 5S company wide at the same time.

There are a few 5S things here: http://elsmar.com/Cove_Members/ and here: http://elsmar.com/pdf_files/

Hard to search for because only a number and a letter. You might also want to look at the Post Attachments list, but again - Search probably won't give you anything. I found quite a few with the listing set at 50 per page and going to about page 15 of the results (the listing without trying a search). I went through this with a few companies in the 1990's.

Also see: 5S Scored Audit form - 5S audit form .xls Excel file attached

 

[David-D]

... If said organization is in the United States and ever wants to get on as a prime contractor for the US Government, a lot of Request for Proposals (RFP) are being dropped with a requirement of maintaining certification to an ISO standard or AS standard depending on the scope.

Actually, many USG contracts require COMPLIANCE with ISO9001 (or whichever is specified) but NOT certification. The standard clause is FAR 52.246-11, "Higher Level Quality Requirement". Of course, one of the ways to help demonstrate compliance is via certification but on the other hand, certification has never ensured compliance.

The clause is available at:
http://farsite.hill.af.mil/REGHTML/Regs/far2afmcfars/fardfars/Far/52_246.htm#P201_41314

David

 

[Sidney Vianna]

on the other hand, certification has never ensured compliance.

That is correct. But if you require compliance with a standard as a contractual requirement but chooses not to rely on "credible" certification, what other mean are you going to accept as demonstration of conformance? Self declaration? Second party assessment? Neither one of those assure conformance either.

 

[Eredhel]

I definitely agree that certification isn't for all companies. But I'd like to throw something else out there you may not have considered. Many customers that require a "higher level of quality" use ISO as a check in a box. We've been told numerous times by different customers, including the government, we would have a hard date for an audit, but once they verify our certification we never hear about an audit again. Now I'm not saying that's right, but boy is it handy. And for paper pushers in supply chains that's a lot of immediate customer confidence with no extra work.