Is ISO 9001 fully enough to manage a business?

[Golfman25]

Into this world, business came first and many of them thrived and grew. Then came the ISO 9001. So map your business process into the ISO9001. You will find that the economic aspects cannot be mapped. Its not the intent of the ISO 9001 standard.
What is in the standard that you cannot map from your processes is the gap, which you will fill.
Hence that answers. Its not in the scope of the ISO 9001 to manage your business.
Now see the cover page of the standard. It is Quality management systems - Requirements

But it's not. It's a business management system. If they would change an actually call it what it is they would have less "conflict" between quality and management.

 

[RoxaneB]

I have long disliked the term QUALITY Management System and substituted the term BUSINESS instead, making sure that if I used the acronym, I said BMS (and not BS...because people would giggle like school kids).

I have also been an advocate that the concepts and the requirements of the BMS be applied across the entire organization - production, shipping, human resources, finance, purchasing, quality, etc.. When an organization only chooses to apply a BMS - or QMS - to part of itself, it's essentially saying that they're doing this for a piece of paper instead of truly developing a culture that cares about the Stakeholders.

Another reason I prefer the term BMS is that too often we see a QMS shunted into the lap of the Quality Department. Again, if you want to truly gain value from a management system, having it adopted by and applied by and the responsibility of everyone with the BUSINESS is vital.

But to the Original Poster's question, no ISO 9001 is not enough to fully manage a business - however, it can be strong support mechanism in establishing and sustaining robust processes.

 

[somashekar]

I have long disliked the term QUALITY Management System and substituted the term BUSINESS instead, making sure that if I used the acronym, I said BMS (and not BS...because people would giggle like school kids).

I have also been an advocate that the concepts and the requirements of the BMS be applied across the entire organization - production, shipping, human resources, finance, purchasing, quality, etc.. When an organization only chooses to apply a BMS - or QMS - to part of itself, it's essentially saying that they're doing this for a piece of paper instead of truly developing a culture that cares about the Stakeholders.

Another reason I prefer the term BMS is that too often we see a QMS shunted into the lap of the Quality Department. Again, if you want to truly gain value from a management system, having it adopted by and applied by and the responsibility of everyone with the BUSINESS is vital.

But to the Original Poster's question, no ISO 9001 is not enough to fully manage a business - however, it can be strong support mechanism in establishing and sustaining robust processes.

As much as I like to call it a BMS, the reality is that it is called as the QMS.
There can be several reasons why it is called as the QMS and not the BMS. The concepts that are so vividly said in the ISO 9001 can be made suitable for any type of organization., be it a business for profit, non profit organization, Welfare or a co-operative society, Temple trust, Charitable institution, or any other type of pure service organization. So in that sense, a Business may not be the true word that can be used.

 

[Marc]

As much as I like to call it a BMS, the reality is that it is called as the QMS.

There can be several reasons why it is called as the QMS and not the BMS. The concepts that are so vividly said in the ISO 9001 can be made suitable for any type of organization., be it a business for profit, non profit organization, Welfare or a co-operative society, Temple trust, Charitable institution, or any other type of pure service organization. So in that sense, a Business may not be the true word that can be used.

In today's world, even non-profits are, in reality, profit businesses. Just look to the upper management pulling in millions in salary. Churches/religions are notorious for this, being (in the US, at least) tax exempt just makes it MORE profitable. E.g.: Jacksonville.com: Report: Deeper Life bishop lives in luxury off donations for poor 9/22/03 - Another example - After finding out the salaries of Red Cross "upper management" and how little of all donations actually end up "helping people" I stopped donating.

Let's be real - They are all businesses and ISO 9001 is just a sub-set of requirements for a business. I'll also remind, as I pointed out in a recent post in a discussion, that less than 0.001% of all businesses world wide are registered to ISO 9001 which shows that ISO 9001 isn't by any means necessary for a business to be successful and profitable.

So - Call it a "quality" management system, but it's still just a part of any business management "system".

 

[RoxaneB]

As much as I like to call it a BMS, the reality is that it is called as the QMS.

It sounds like you just implied "that's the way we've always done". Once upon a time, communication happened through face-to-face story-telling...then paper...then wires...then wireless. If we had said "communication is done through in-person stories only" we wouldn't have books, radio, or phones.

A QMS will remain in the world of quality and ISO 9001 will continue to struggle with trying to show how it adds value to an organization until it is able to demonstrate that it can be applied to all activities within an organization.

There can be several reasons why it is called as the QMS and not the BMS. The concepts that are so vividly said in the ISO 9001 can be made suitable for any type of organization., be it a business for profit, non profit organization, Welfare or a co-operative society, Temple trust, Charitable institution, or any other type of pure service organization. So in that sense, a Business may not be the true word that can be used.

I think we're discussing semantics here - one side says ISO can be used to help manage quality business processes and the other side says ISO can be used to help manage a business to have quality processes. Regardless of which interpretation we prefer, it sounds like we're saying it can be applied across the entire organization. Unfortunately, ISO - or those who are supposed experts in it - haven't done a adequate job in selling its true value and ISO 9001 often remains as checkbox on an organization's annual "to do" list instead of being ingrained into everything it does.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

BMS or QMS? Hard to kill discussion.

If (BIG IF) the ISO 9001:2015 requirement for the QMS to be embedded (my word, not theirs) in the organization business processes is fulfilled, we have the solution. Unfortunately, evidence shows that some requirements don't stick.

The only sustainable path for proper implementation of a quality system is to make it integral, seamless and embedded with the operational/business processes. Short of that, they don't have a system.

 

[Stijloor]

I've had a president who could see the company was headed downhill ask me if I could use ISO 9001 to drive sales.

I had to tell him that if he put documented processes in place to do what he wanted to have happen, I could audit those processes and verify their effective application. But that there was nothing in the standard about compelling effective salesmanship and quotas, only about ensuring that customer requirements were determined and met.

Section 4 in ISO 9001:2015 is supposed to take care of this.

 

[QAMTY]

After hearing opinions coming from all of you, and some ideas in my mind, What I have

to tell is the next:

In order to make a business profitable, successful, with high efficiency and efficacy, its not enough to drive it by only following what ISO 9001 suggest.

It is clear that most of the clauses, are focused most on quality in product and services, (non-conforming product, inspections to product, raw material, inspection,etc.)

We would expect from ISO, other kind of clauses, I think something like a suggestions,
to tie the main objectives, revenues, profits, efficacy, etc. to the production processes.

That´s why some companies include into the ISO systems methods like Kaplan´s Balance score card trying to cover what is absent in ISO.

I think there are other methodologies out there for these purposes.

From what I´ve read, Kaplan considers several aspects as main elements: economical, people, client, training, and processes, tying everything as a whole having better results.


Im not an expert, but that is what I perceive.


Its very grateful to hear opinions from expert people like you.


Regards

 

[Jen Kirley]

ISO does not make a business run profit and be successful. People do that.

We establish and maintain robust business systems that happen to conform to ISO, we do not create business systems as per an ISO recipe. The most recent version has moved away from the old approach: non-conforming product, inspections to product, raw material, inspection, etc., and into what looks more like Total Quality Management.

Kaplan has it right, and we could argue those principles are part of ISO as well.

 

[SpinDr99]

Of course not. Not to FULLY manage a business, but it adds great value.