Some of these Working Groups exist within the confines of their little bubbles, accountable to no one, delivering nothing of substance. But, of course, with pomp and circumstance. 
ISO 9001 News Tirelessly Improving the Brand Integrity of ISO 9001 - Working Group under ISO TC 176
- Thread starter Sidney Vianna
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Many of these committees exist within the confines of their little bubbles, accountable to no one, delivering nothing of substance. But, of course, with pomp and circumstance.
I have no reason not to believe this, but it is still better than anything else out there.
I wonder how we survived 200 years of industrialization without it.
I just posted a comment in the LinkedIn discussion, linked in the 1st post of this thread. I said:
But I seriously doubt they would engage over here. For sure, working so tirelessly, leaves them no time to communicate with their target audience.
I am flabbergasted that ISO would treat something as serious as the integrity and sustainability of it's best selling (by far) standard so amateurishly.
But I seriously doubt they would engage over here. For sure, working so tirelessly, leaves them no time to communicate with their target audience.
I am flabbergasted that ISO would treat something as serious as the integrity and sustainability of it's best selling (by far) standard so amateurishly.
When I was doing my first implementation in the early 90s I worked with an engineer who had been brought out of retirement to work on a special project. He was a very pragmatic and highly skilled guy. I asked him one day what he thought about all of the ISO 9001 stuff that was going on. His answer, after giving it a little bit of thought: "They're spending $100,000 on this thing, and I can't get a nickel to improve the product."
Bill Levinson
Industrial Statistician and Trainer
We did, but jobs were being done nowhere nearly as well as they should have been done. This is more along the lines of lean manufacturing than quality, but consider brick laying as practiced for thousands of years. Here is a video from more than 100 years ago (probably using Thomas Edison's movie technology) in which you can see a skilled mason laying bricks.
The jobs therefore got done, and with steam and then electric power to help, but they did not get done as well as they should have been done. Quality problems were frequent and often deadly. Steam boiler explosions led to ASME's safety codes. The Titanic sank because her rivets contained too much slag, and apparently gave way to aggravate the flooding after the ship hit an iceberg.
I use the talking point, "Invisible when present, conspicuous when absent" with regard to ISO 9001, the position also taken by Tubecon (ISO 9001 | Tubecon). When the standard is in place and being used for its intended purpose, the quality problems don't happen and the standard is taken for granted. When the standard is absent (or not being used effectively), the consequences make themselves known pretty quickly. The airline industry, most of which is not registered to ISO 9001, kept stranding passengers on runaways and putting their lives at risk (as shown by the involvement of emergency response vehicles in a couple of cases) because no corrective action was taken to prevent a recurrence. The health care industry throws away about a trillion dollars a year on inefficiencies and preventable medical errors, again due to lack of effective quality management systems. The health care industry "works," to the extent that we are much better off with it than without it, but it is still the third leading cause of death in the United States (after cardiovascular disease and cancer).
Re: "They're spending $100,000 on this thing, and I can't get a nickel to improve the product." If the quality system, ISO 9001 or otherwise, identifies a risk or opportunity related to the product, and you can't get resources to act on it, then management is not using the standard properly. This applies to any quality program.
hogheavenfarm
Admin
There is a difference between quality and efficiency though. The older brickwork may have been slow, but was pretty thorough, new stuff I see today, no matter how efficient, is not as good.
Bill Levinson
Industrial Statistician and Trainer
Efficiency is perfectly consistent with good quality, and may even support it. An inefficient process can, by generating inventory, give defects a place to hide. Just In Time requires, on the other hand, application of the Ford Motor Company's "Don't take it, don't make it, don't pass it along" with "it" referring to poor quality. This can be achieved with Shigeo Shingo's source inspections and error-proofing methods that, if they don't stop the defects from being created, catch them before they can go anywhere.
