Is ISO 9001 Cresting? Is a rebellion in the works?

[Marc]

Re: This thread was started in 2002

The poll has been closed for a while. If you really want to you could start a new thread, close this one and add links to each other.

 

[John Broomfield]

This is an interesting thread....I have been the champion for ISO in my company for 11 years now. We were told by our customer that we needed to be in order to keep their business. Even though we were told by our customer to get certified, we had seen huge benefits from being certified. Since than another customer required us to be certified. We later went from ISO to AS9100 about 5-6 years ago.

Our 1st customer is now requiring the tool shop (our sister company) to be certified to ISO in which I have been asked to help them with their documentation and implementation. I believe they too can benefit by a more structure quality system.

I would really hate to think that all this effort might soon go away or to another type of quality system. That happened to me before years back when ISO was the new kid on the block, I remember people saying back than that ISO is just another fad and in time it will go away, why bother putting all that time into it for nothing.

I'm concerned now to go through this cost of certification on the tool shop and in a year from now if ISO goes south, my president asks "what happen?

To be honest with you...in all the 11 years that we were ISO/AS we had not acquired any new customers, we only maintained the customers that we had which is still good. But one of the reasons that was sited back than was that it should increase our customer base.

Lexylou,

Will your company continue to use and improve its management system in conformity with ISO 9001 even if the customer did not insist on certification and your President decided to stop certification?

Surely the formal management system in not place just for certification?

Certification of the kind we have may crest but ISO 9001 will live on (benefitting from another 3 or 4 improvements) as a basic management system standard for another 23 years.

John

 

[Wes Bucey]

Re: This thread was started in 2002

Should the poll be closed? Or start a new one?

Stijloor.

It seems to me the perspective of growing or shrinking is complicated by the "similar" Standards which are growing by leaps and bounds:
ISO 13485
TS 16949
AS 9100
Add to that the wider dissemination of Standards-requiring supply chains which have members scattered globally, some in countries where the lip service to quality far exceeds the actual practice of quality. In such countries, we hear ever-increasing anecdotal tales of registrars and their auditors who are willing to issue certificates of registration to any organization as long as the check clears. This results in a rising level of cynicism among quality professionals visiting here and further skews poll results.

BOTTOM LINE:
Can we devise a poll which takes such factors into account (as well as other factors I haven't mentioned?)

 

[Stijloor]

Re: This thread was started in 2002

The poll has been closed for a while. If you really want to you could start a new thread, close this one and add links to each other.

Oops! Did not see this note: "Voters: 234. This poll is closed."

Stijloor.

 

[tomvehoski]

Lexylou,

Will your company continue to use and improve its management system in conformity with ISO 9001 even if the customer did not insist on certification and your President decided to stop certification?

Surely the formal management system in not place just for certification?

Certification of the kind we have may crest but ISO 9001 will live on (benefitting from another 3 or 4 improvements) as a basic management system standard for another 23 years.

John

You are making the assumption that maintaining certification causes a company to maintain and improve their system. That is far from the truth in many organizations. For many they just find a weak auditor and pencil-whip some documents together the week before the audit.

I used to work at a Fortune 50 electronics manufacturer. Our TS auditor came in for an audit, chatted all day with workers, ignored many glaring findings, had some nice lunches and dinners, and raved about how great we were. A couple days later I received the audit report, noting that we needed to better identify our steel in the stamping department. Um, we make electronics, and don't have a stamping department. It was obvious that he just changed the name on the last report he wrote and fired it off to us. Auditor didn't care since he got paid. My management didn't care since they got to keep their certificate with a minimum of hassle.

Sadly I have seen similar situations more often than I see a certification really motivate companies to improvement. I have zero faith in the value of an ISO certificate on any company that I know nothing else about.

 

[JaneB]

You are making the assumption that maintaining certification causes a company to maintain and improve their system.

I didn't draw that conclusion. Indeed, John's post included this key question:

Surely the formal management system is not in place just for certification?

If the only reason a company goes after certification is for the 'certificate on the wall' it ain't gonna get much more out of it, if indeed it achieves that. It's like saying that a licensed driver is a/a good driver and b/will improve because they have a license. Nope. Garbage in, garbage out. The certificate alone won't do it.

 

[Lexylou]

Originally posted by JaneB

If the only reason a company goes after certification is for the 'certificate on the wall' it ain't gonna get much more out of it, if indeed it achieves that. It's like saying that a licensed driver is a/a good driver and b/will improve because they have a license. Nope. Garbage in, garbage out. The certificate alone won't do it.

In the beginning, our customer told us that we needed to be certified to ISO they gave us a time frame of 6 months or they were going somewhere else. At that point we were maintaining a 100% performance/Delivery with this company. So the way we saw it was, Yes it was all about the certificate on the wall.

And unfortunately it is the same for the company I am working with today where they have been given 1 year or the outcome would be the same.

However, as I stated in my previous post, throughout time, when we finally stopped doing it for the sake of certification, we realized what a benefit it has been. I am preaching this as I work with this other company now.
And I guess you could say than that "Yes the certificate alone did do it and we are maintaining it very well"

At this point I do not feel our QMS would change if our president told us to stop the certification in the company I actually work at now. But throughout time who knows how changes in personnel or industry might come into play that could eventually weaken our QMS if Certification was not in place.

I believe the certification keeps us on our toes.