I
Ithalion
I am currently working on getting my company accredited to ISO 9001. I have found a lot of semi-helpful answers to this question, but after a long time of looking at previous threads to try to find an answer, I decided that I just needed my specific case to be addressed. (Which means that yes, this is a loooong post, so I apologize right now)
I work for an engineered solutions company that manufactures mostly control panels. Now, based on that statement, I know it will sound absurd to ask if I would be able to exclude Design, but here's my reasoning. First off, I'm not certain that what we do would be considered design, because we are not doing R&D type work of developing new products; we are given specs from customers which one engineer then sits down and "customizes." Our customers have a varying degree of knowledge of the technical side of what they want, so one customer might say "we want a panel that can do XYZ, now you figure out what that needs" and then there's some customers that say "We want THIS drive, THESE terminal blocks, THIS colored pilot light". The thing is, even for the first case, they're all still control panels, we're just customizing what goes on it and where, we're not designing a whole new product line or anything. Maybe that is blatantly design, but I'm hoping there's a difference.
:
Regardless, we didn't want to even include Design in our Scope, because honestly, we think we can get what we want from ISO 9001 without including it, and we can't think of a way in which it wouldn't be a massive headache for most Jobs we do. Here's why:
Our company is a customization company based on EVER-CHANGING customer specifications (even long into the manufacturing stage), so having to set up a Plan (7.3.1) and add inputs that would just be constantly changed seems rather pointless. There is an unbelievable amount of change during the process based on dynamic customer desires, realizations of a lack of feasibility for certain layouts from the manufacturing technicians, and so on. Basically, it's a process that constantly gets new inputs (that can't be foreseen at the beginning), all the way up and through the testing of the product, from the customer, engineer, and builder.
Therefore, trying to formalize an ISO compliant process for "Design" (which I'm still hopelessly hoping our process doesn't apply to) not only seems pointless, but also would slow down/deter our prized flexibility. Many bigger companies outsource our type of work to us because they are ISO 9001 compliant and it doesn't allow them the flexibility and speed we have. It would take them far too long and far too much work to do what we do with their ISO certification. I'm not blaming ISO of course, because I'm sure it's great for most cases (and, in fact, for most of our processes), and maybe the companies that outsource to us have an over-complicated QMS.
The point is, I'm hoping I can just exclude design because it doesn't apply, but if not, I want to exclude it from our Scope because my company thinks (based on discussing it as well as examples of other companies) it will literally make us less efficient and valuable to our customers.
P.S. I know it's been a big discussion that we would then be misleading customers to say we're ISO certified, but I would make it clear on our ISO claim on our website and Scope which processes are certified and that it EXCLUDES design.
P.P.S. I will also discuss this with the CB's we're looking at, but I have seen a lot of valuable information on this site and I want to hear what you guys say.
Thank you.
I work for an engineered solutions company that manufactures mostly control panels. Now, based on that statement, I know it will sound absurd to ask if I would be able to exclude Design, but here's my reasoning. First off, I'm not certain that what we do would be considered design, because we are not doing R&D type work of developing new products; we are given specs from customers which one engineer then sits down and "customizes." Our customers have a varying degree of knowledge of the technical side of what they want, so one customer might say "we want a panel that can do XYZ, now you figure out what that needs" and then there's some customers that say "We want THIS drive, THESE terminal blocks, THIS colored pilot light". The thing is, even for the first case, they're all still control panels, we're just customizing what goes on it and where, we're not designing a whole new product line or anything. Maybe that is blatantly design, but I'm hoping there's a difference.
:Regardless, we didn't want to even include Design in our Scope, because honestly, we think we can get what we want from ISO 9001 without including it, and we can't think of a way in which it wouldn't be a massive headache for most Jobs we do. Here's why:
Our company is a customization company based on EVER-CHANGING customer specifications (even long into the manufacturing stage), so having to set up a Plan (7.3.1) and add inputs that would just be constantly changed seems rather pointless. There is an unbelievable amount of change during the process based on dynamic customer desires, realizations of a lack of feasibility for certain layouts from the manufacturing technicians, and so on. Basically, it's a process that constantly gets new inputs (that can't be foreseen at the beginning), all the way up and through the testing of the product, from the customer, engineer, and builder.
Therefore, trying to formalize an ISO compliant process for "Design" (which I'm still hopelessly hoping our process doesn't apply to) not only seems pointless, but also would slow down/deter our prized flexibility. Many bigger companies outsource our type of work to us because they are ISO 9001 compliant and it doesn't allow them the flexibility and speed we have. It would take them far too long and far too much work to do what we do with their ISO certification. I'm not blaming ISO of course, because I'm sure it's great for most cases (and, in fact, for most of our processes), and maybe the companies that outsource to us have an over-complicated QMS.
The point is, I'm hoping I can just exclude design because it doesn't apply, but if not, I want to exclude it from our Scope because my company thinks (based on discussing it as well as examples of other companies) it will literally make us less efficient and valuable to our customers.
P.S. I know it's been a big discussion that we would then be misleading customers to say we're ISO certified, but I would make it clear on our ISO claim on our website and Scope which processes are certified and that it EXCLUDES design.
P.P.S. I will also discuss this with the CB's we're looking at, but I have seen a lot of valuable information on this site and I want to hear what you guys say.
Thank you.
