ISO 9001 - Gigantic waste or Beneficial? Why does ISO 9001 exist? Got data/facts?

[Ilias]

ISO data published

Dear all,

ISO, on their website, have published their latest ISO 9000 registration data that they have obtained from around the world. It clearly shows an increasing decline in the majority of countries. For instance the UK ISO 9000 registration is down 20%.

However, the US is still increasing. Does anybody have any clear idea why the US is bucking the trend?

Other countries that are increasing rapidly like China, Spain, Japan, Romania all have pressure to implement ISO 9000 nationally, so they are chasing the certificate.

Ilias

 

[Peter Fraser]

Ilias

I recall hearing around the time of the release of the new standard someone say that UKAS expected about a 30 percent reduction in the number of certified organisations, and a similar reduction in certification bodies. The argument was, I believe, that the certificate would mean more for those left, because it would be harder to obtain and would give more comfort to customers doing business with them. So if the reduction is only 20%, does that mean that the certificate still has the same (lack of) value? Or that it means more in the US for those folk who have it???

And was the reasoning for the predicted reduction in the UK justified by events?

 

[Greg B]

Dear all,

ISO, on their website, have published their latest ISO 9000 registration data that they have obtained from around the world. It clearly shows an increasing decline in the majority of countries (as xxxxxxx was trying to do something about last year). For instance the UK ISO 9000 registration is down 20%.

However, the US is still increasing. Does anybody have any clear idea why the US is bucking the trend?

Other countries that are increasing rapidly like China, Spain, Japan, Romania all have pressure to implement ISO 9000 nationally, so they are chasing the certificate.

Ilias

Ilias,

Is this NEW business registration in the UK? Do you think the American Car and Aeorospace industries have anythiong to do with the ISO increase in America?

 

[Carl Keller]

Uh, guys,

Before you get too excited about the U.S. Increase in registrations, you might want to look at those numbers again.

Page 13 says the number of ISO 9000 registarations was 38,927 in December of 2002.

They claim 41,571 in december of 2003, HOWEVER only 30,294 were the 2000 revision. This means in January of 2004, there were only 30,000 VALID registrations. Looks like a 24% DECREASE to me.

Carl-

 

[Jim Howe]

And so should the question be "WHY IS ISO REGISTRATION DECLINING?" Any thing new here?

 

[qualitytrec]

And so should the question be "WHY IS ISO REGISTRATION DECLINING?" Any thing new here?

Are the registrations following the jobs? I mean US manufacturing is moving over-seas very quickly. Every week we get two or three notices of auctions for businesses gone bust here in Michigan. So if the jobs are increasing in China etc... then would you not also expect that they would have an increase in registration while wherever the jobs came from would show a decrease.
Something else I am wondering about is companies that become registered and go out of business shortly after. Is this a new trend or just a coincedence that I know of two to three companies that have done this in the last year? For those companies who did that it was definately a gigantic waste.
Mark

 

[Jim Howe]

Are the registrations following the jobs? I mean US manufacturing is moving over-seas very quickly. Every week we get two or three notices of auctions for businesses gone bust here in Michigan. So if the jobs are increasing in China etc... then would you not also expect that they would have an increase in registration while wherever the jobs came from would show a decrease.
Something else I am wondering about is companies that become registered and go out of business shortly after. Is this a new trend or just a coincedence that I know of two to three companies that have done this in the last year? For those companies who did that it was definately a gigantic waste.
Mark

I do know of one example. As QA Manager at Western Reserve Electronics, Inc.(late 1990's). I was tasked with putting together an ISO-9002 program. This was completed, but as we approached registration the company filed banckruptcy and closed the doors. It was a really bad experience! It is my belief that the company was desperate for relief and thought that ISO was the Magic Pill. Perhaps we are seeing some of this in your examples.

 

[Carl Keller]

I am so sick and tired of hearing about "Our" businesses moving "overseas"

I am 42 years old and can remember my father talking about it when I was 7.

I have heard about it ever since. The Japanese are ruining our auto industry. The Japanese are ruining our domestic motercycle market. The Chinese, The Koreans, Blah,blah,blah. THEY are not ruining or stealing anything, we are giving it to them.

Would everyone like to know why our businesses go overseas?
Jack Nicholson comes to mind "You can't HANDLE the truth!"

We tax the **** out of our own businesses and let foreign business, and sometimes foreign people in our own country, get tax breaks

We bow to Unions time and again. Necessary at one time, now just a bottomless political money pit. Everything from auto workers and the doughnut eating "Heroes" of Police and Fire departments all across the country, to the most useless union ever developed, the teachers union. What a pathetic bunch of losers.

We allow white collar crime to run rampant. Enron, Martha Stewart, Halliburton, the list goes on, and on. Wake up, do you really think that these people are making decisions that are worth the millions they are paid annually? You could put anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of business in the same position for six figures and get the same result. Instead, we pay them 50 million in salaries, dividends, stock options, and severence packages and they STILL choose the unethical and illegal route because they are greedy. And we defend them! (Please refer to some recent ethics threads. THESE are the people running our companies.)

And yes, we start money grabbing initiatives like ISO and Six Sigma that start out as potential holy grails of our profession, only to become "pimped" and regarded as anything but useful.

And we end up paying for these insane practices. An item that can be made at the same quality level, without the taxes, without paying unions to pay off the Governor and without paying off the consultants and registrars can be made with a substantially lower cost.

Yes, offshore looks pretty good.

If they need to throw an ISO registration cert in there, it is no big deal. It has little to do with the quality of the product, but if required, they will oblige.

Are there other factors? Sure, there are plenty.

Carl-

 

[AllanJ]

It seems to me, this whole debate is beginning to center on these things:

1. An absence of verifiable complete data, fully disclosed and open for perusal concerning the number of registrations, the associated industries, the number of resignations, the number affected by M&A activities (as an example) and so forth.

2. An absence of verified, quantified cost benefits for the registrants before and after achieving ISO 9K registration. (And that industry has now been operating for 15 years or so.)

Let us consider would we, as "quality professionals" accept this state of affairs in our employers' or clients' quality programs? If someone writes a report or wants a decision taken, would we not insist on the underlying data being sound etc.?

If we have such a situation emanating from the ISO 9K registration industry, which many CEOs et al regard as the face of quality and which those who promote it regard as the flagship of the quality movement, what image does that present for us?

Whatever may be the case, one thing is indisputable: after 15 years of advocacy, heavy selling and campaigning, the actual number of registered companies (or the number of certificates issued, which is an entirely different matter) is a mere fraction of the number of businesses operating worldwide. Pick up any "Yellow Pages" or business directory or look at a house magazine for an industrial sector and count how many firms exist just in your own locality/ business sector, let alone, worldwide.

If my involvement with top executives has taught me just one thing, it is this: when there is no doubt about the benefit of pursuing a new tool or technique, there is a stampede to do it. Take as an example: how many firms rushed to install telex machines, fax machines, PCs, email when each of those arrived? Certainly, the registration industry would have shouted from the rooftops a similar stampede for ISO 9K certs etc. had they experienced a similar stampede.

 

[qualitytrec]

I am so sick and tired of hearing about "Our" businesses moving "overseas"
Carl-

Wow must of touched a nerve.
Just for clarity all I said was manufacturing jobs were moving, not that "they" were stealing them. And being that they are moving would you not expect the countries they are moving to to be where ISO would be increasing and the also would you not expect the places that were loosing the business to show a decline in ISO registration. Sorry if it came out differently than that, but that is what my point was intended to be. By the way Carl I agree with almost everything you said. Many of the problems in the US market is because of the US not the "them".
Mark