Process Approach vs. Elemental Approach - It's a blend of the two. Always has been. They are not mutually exclusive. As my image in my post above shows, we were implementing by what I will call a "blended" approach in the early 1990's years before "The Process Approach" became a buzz phrase. Nor were procedures ever a problem with respect to content, much less their title.
The only time what you are saying makes any sense if when the responsible person in a company buys canned documentation and expects the canned procedures to do magic because the responsible person is totally ignorant about
ISO 9001. In such cases it's almost always someone who is tasked to implement ISO 9001 who isn't qualified to be doing that task. Canned procedures are everywhere and there are many, many discussions about their value. I can see their place when used by a qualified person who understands you can't just take a canned procedure and sign a name to it and expect their company to change and do it the way the canned procedure says to.
Canned procedures are just "food for thought".
As to:
"Do you see the difference between an elemental approach (18 procedures dedicated to requirements) an a process approach (10 procedures dedicated to processes)?" - Nope - I don't. I never counted procedures. I've never had a client that did. Yes, they want to know what the minimum required procedures are (their interest was/is usually in what *documented* procedures were/are required) but it was always a moot issue. The procedures required by ISO 9001 are typically dwarfed by a company's total number of procedures (documented and un-documented) even in small companies. Total number of procedures was a function of the company's size, processes and such. Procedures required by ISO 9001 were of little importance and
almost all had existing procedures which covered required ISO 9001 procedures already. The most common "missing" procedures (or a system at all) was Internal Audits. Other than that, ISO 9001 was, and is, basic good business processes.
I remember the first time I saw a copy if ISO 9001 around 1990 - I laughed at the girl who showed it to me. The requirements were so basic that I could hardly believe it would be a big deal. The gal told me if I knew ISO 9001 I could make a lot of money off of it, and I thought she was nuts.
It turned out she was right. There was a period of about 10 years where ISO 9001 and then QS-9000 (then TS 16949) were money makers (aka Rain Machines). I remember when finding a certified ISO 9001 auditor was hard. These days they're a dime a dozen.
One of joys I got out of implementations was they forced the company to stop and take a look at what they were doing and how they were doing it.
My joy came at the end when they would be happy because they had identified improvements they could and did make, often formerly complicated procedures were simplified (I was pushing flow charts {or what ever you want to call them} back in the early 1990's), and in general they felt they really accomplished something. It was rare that it was due to any ISO 9001 requirement(s). It was that they had to stop and take a good look at things such as individual processes, as well as process interactions.
The biggest thing that happened in almost every company I worked with was revision of old, out of date procedures which didn't reflect the way they actually did things because the companies tended to not update procedures when changes occurred. Most of that today isn't anywhere near the problem it was, but since in the early to mid 1990's most companies were still very much bound to paper it was quite common for procedures not to be updated because of the "hassle" factor. There are other reasons, too, such as employees knowing what their job was and what they ere supposed to do (much of it done during "On The Job"
training).
It's a different world today than it was in the 1990's and before. There are better tools (such as software) and information resources have exploded due to the internet. Think back to how companies ran in the 1950's. Better still, Henry Ford was making the old "dependable"
Ford_Model_T starting in 1908. How many documented procedures do you think they had?
Manufacturing, and service industries as well, have changed dramatically over the years. And they would have had ISO 9001 not come along.
Even after the 2000 version of ISO 9001 was released, I had a number of companies contact me about differences. They were expecting to have to make significant changes, particularly in documentation. They didn't have many changes and all retained their old quality manual and procedure structure. Back then I made a chart of differences, but I'm too lazy tonight to look it up.
I think you're sorta beating a dead horse. ISO 9001 is old hat for the most part these days. There have been so many companies that have gone through it, there are web sites galore about it and selling ISO 9001 stuff, there are so many "ISO 9001 How To" books and DVDs and such that it's - Well, it's just old hat. ISO 9001 is minimalist, at best, anyway.
A debate about "The Process Approach" is a lot like the debates here (and elsewhere) about things like the content of
Quality Manuals. There are hundreds of ways to write one, and although there are many opinions, there simply is no "one right way" to write a quality manual and it's contents.
You have a thing for "The Process Approach" and procedures. I think that's fine and dandy. But it's not new, there's nothing special about it, and it's not a big deal in my world.
