<snip> In managing a business, in your experience: <snip>
Just out of curiosity, and maybe you have told us in another discussion thread here, but... Exactly what business are you in? I'm not interested in the company name or anything confidential.
I am not sure exactly what the situation is, but this has been discussed many times if you think about it. ISO 9001 is set of the most basic business practices. As in
REALLY basic. Every business has aspects which ISO 9001 doesn't cover. As you mentioned, financials.
Have you reviewed, for example,
Organization As An Extended System ? No business is just ISO 9001 requirements. That has never been the case. Typically a "successful" business is already compliant to ISO 9001 requirements.
Nor is ISO 9001 a
"quality system" standard. Early on it was said to be, but today then have even been clear, which Sidney has said in many posts, (E.g.:
One year to ISO 9001 and 14001 transition deadline. ISO "IAF communique" )
The intended primary beneficiary of ISO 9001 are supposed to be the customers of the organizations that follow and/or attain certification to ISO 9001. The intended benefit to the customers of the 9001-compliant organization is to provide confidence that the customers orders will be fulfilled to their expectations. As we all know, in the business world, having confidence that your supply chain will not drop the ball is priceless.
So, if there was undisputable evidence that suppliers that comply and/or are certified to ISO 9001 are better performing, the whole global customer chain would be flowing down ISO 9001 (and certification) at a much higher rate and we would not see developed economies such as the USA and the UK dropping the need for suppliers conformance to ISO 9001, as the ISO Survey data shows.
Note:
"...confidence that the customers orders will be fulfilled to their expectations..." Now - To me that really means will the supplier provide product which a customer defines in a/the contract (and please don't forget
Contract Review - There is a dedicated
Contract Review firum) - Specifications they have to meet, material specifications, delivery schedules and typically many more specifics.
I bring this up because, at least in English, bringing in the word "expectations" can range widely. I can expect something, but if that expectation is not defined in a contract, through specifications, we can go wide afield.
What is important is how a company (or a person) determines what the specifications are to communicate to the seller. Not expectations,
specifications. As a person, you may, for example, order something online and when you receive it it is "not what you
expected". Some times it's a matter of whether (in a personal buy) the buyer reviewed the seller's product specifications. Other times it can be as simple as "I thought it would be softer" (e.g.: a child's stuffed animal). I recently bought a kitchen counter disk rack to place dishes in to dry after being washed. I received and assembled it and it did not sit flat on a counter surface. I gaged it, in a way, by checking it on my glass top stove. It was not adjustable to make it sit flat on it's four leg contact "clips" so to me it was not what I "expected". I returned it. The company
could have refused the return by telling me that their product description ("specifications") did not specifically state that the rack would sit level, without wobbling, on a flat surface.
So - By using the word "expectations", one can get into the trap of there being nothing to measure
"expectations" which aren't in the specifications. Color is another example - Red is - Well, in many cases (e.g.: a cell phone case) just some shade of red. Then again, sometimes color is very important - So important that colors are agreed to in specifications and can be measured by a
Color Meter or visually in a Macbeth light booth against boundary sample color swatches.
Even the amount of gloss (e.g.;
Gloss Meter, Spectrophotmeter, Thickness Gage, Color Meter, BYK-Gardner - No association, just a Bing search) can be specified and measured. I had to deal with that in vinyls over 20 years ago to ensure steering wheel and passenger dashboard air bag covers matched dashboards.
ISO 9001 does require that "expectations" in the form of specifications be determined by a buyer (customer), and for all intents and purposes requires suppliers to define at least some "specifications" for their products.
I was reviewing some old discussions here and one that came up in a search was
Architect's Client Doesn't Know What He Wants - Contract Review Process
I'm a "contract" person going back years in the DoD stuff. In a search here I found:
Contract Review vs. Preventive Action - Preventive Action. Interesting to think about...
But to get back to my original question - Exactly what business are you in? Or are you trying to write a book, are you a student, or something like that? I am very curious.
"Is ISO 9001 fully enough to manage a business?" --> No. Not by a long shot.
You
can define what your
specifications are, but you can
NOT define what your customer's
"expectations" are other than by providing exacting specifications.
