Re: So?
energy said:
Is the air a little thin up there? Most people in those positions are not in a position to "live" to the 100 pages of ISO9000. They are not CEO's, Presidents or General Managers. The people who contribute to these discussions have their hands full just getting Sections 4 to 8 implemented satisfactorily.
You ain't just whistlin' Dixie, Energy! I'm no Einstein, and certainly not as experienced as many of the contributors here, but it became very clear to me very quickly when I got into the "Quality Area" that you can only get as much done as the Head Honcho lets you get done. I've never "suckered" (Jim Wade's word) my organization into limiting itself when it comes to the QMS, nor have any of my peers that I speak with. Rather I've fought tooth-and-nail to get them to embrace what they have. Many (not all, but many) of the Honchos I know of make the Quality organization have to fight for every inch -- only the lucky ones have the Honchos pushing them. Many Honchos' actions don't match their words. My former company once hired a VP of Operations who, during his interview, wowed most of the Senior Staff with his goal of making us a Malcom Baldridge Award winner within 5 years. Hah! He got the job, largely on those kind of comments, but once hired he fought me at every turn. One of my favorite quotes became "What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say" - Emerson. Shipout of product was everything, and it that meant cheating on testing or eliminating completely training classes for entry-level (and experienced) workers, so be it. This attitude rubbed off on some of the Supervisors under him too, of course. We'd hire HS grads off the street, with no experience, and put them on a machine by themselves the same day. Yields predictably went to h#$%, and labor spending went up, but hey, we'd (sometimes) reach that $ goal for the month. Despite my shouts of protest, the President was only weakly pushing him to work more closely with me (Quality). My new company is not too different.
I'll bet if there was a poll of Quality Managers/Leaders asking how many of them have to push their company's leaders to improve quality vs. how many company leaders push their quality leaders to go further, the overwhelming majority would vote for the former.
Sorry -- off my soap box now.
Mike
-- the last thing I need is to have to learn another "standard" and make a system compliant to both. I don't see enough value in what I've read to warrant the effort. Just my 2 cents worth.
There are a lot of people in the positions you mentioned who have not even understood those 12 pages... 
