Unnecessary Bureaucracy in ISO 9001 Systems

[Cassie James]

I am curious to hear about the most unnecessary or over complicated practices people have seen in ISO 9001 systems.


I recently came across a company where customer orders received by email were printed, rewritten by hand onto a paper form, and then filed in a binder just to show the order had been “recorded”. The email already contained all the required information, but this process had been followed for years because it was how the system was originally set up.


We have all seen how ISO 9001 can drift into bureaucracy. Sharing real examples like this can help clarify what the standard actually requires and encourage simpler, more practical systems.

 

[Bev D]

We have had so many discussions regarding this over the decades. I know a simple search wouldn’t turn these up as you would need to search for a specific ‘requirement’. It would be more helpful if you started browsing some of the threads on auditing and findings as well as some of the basic QMS forums. Your enthusiasm is great to see, however, when such general questions are asked the thread can either become congested & diversionary or get very few responses. The latter is likely as this is Christmas Eve and many of the seasoned members will go dark for a few days to spend time with family.

General queries asking for specific examples is often just a ‘bitch’ fest. Fun but not all that helpful.
Queries about specific examples can help you out of a sticky situation.

So for a general question asking about bureaucratic examples is probably best answered with reasons why these things happen instead of bemoaning specific examples.

What I will say is that in my experience and from being on this group for 30 some years these bureaucratic practices are almost always a result of the following:
- inexperienced Quality personnel with a serious lack of training in the applicable standard and a lack of critical thinking of what can/should be done.
- a misguided urgency in become certified to a standard quickly and cheaply, leading to doing things that will guarantee that an auditor will approve, but no thought to what the organization really needs. This is a ‘cut and paste’ approach. It usually occurs with companies that simply want certification to grow the business and not to improve quality to grow the business…and from ‘incompetent’ auditors that only know what they’ve seen.
- a misguided need to assert ‘authority’ over the organization and force quality. This usually is recognized as a police department rather than a team effort. It can result from a ‘bitter’ QA dept that feels marginalized and ineffectual.
Too often it is all 3 working in conjunction…

 

[Randy]

As Forrest Gump's mother said, "Stupid is as stupid does".

 

[Golfman25]

Monitoring the office temperature (No relation to the quality lab).

 

[Jen Kirley]

What @Bev D said. I find such practices as you describe in places with immature QMS and lower-skilled, lower-educated personnel on the production level. I see a lot pf paper documents with hand-stamped ink marks indicating a state of controlled document approval, when options such as the voting button in Outlook could manage that even better. I also see manual practices in places where managers just believe it is needed "because ISO."

I can't share who these organizations are due to confidentiality agreements.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Legacy bureaucracy and overkill is something that annihilates efficiency and stakeholder buy-in. Any step of any business process should be able to survive the litmus tests of answering two simple questions:

1. Why do we do this?
2. Why do we do this, this way?

Many times ISO (9001/14001/45001, etc.) is just used as an excuse for bureaucracy that serves the sole purpose of job protection.

 

[Randy]

Many times ISO (9001/14001/45001, etc.) is just used as an excuse for bureaucracy that serves the sole purpose of job protection.

Nooooooo, say it ain't so.