Why not make 'standards' free?

Should 'Standards' Be Free?

  • Good and Possible

    Votes: 24 72.7%
  • Good but impossible for following reasons... (post)

    Votes: 8 24.2%
  • Bad, because... (post)

    Votes: 1 3.0%
  • ... History does not bear subjunctive mood ...

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    33
Elsmar Forum Sponsor
V

vanputten

Does SABS charge for those 50 copies that will be in your mailbox this afternoon? Are you saying that it is okay to charge for standards if the supporting service is good?

I don't get it.

The members of the US Techical Advisory Group to ISO/TC176 now have to pay $150 USD every year to volunteer to work on management system standards. TC176 was the last United States TC to ISO to charge a fee for membership. For many years TC 176 members in the US did not have to pay for membership becasue of the perceived revenue from ISO 9001. The membership fee was implemented because there is an operating financial loss. Of course, there may be many factors as to why there is a financial loss and may have nothing to do with charging for a copy of ISO 9001. I just want to share that the member bodies of ISO may not be profiting on ISO 9001 the way we think.

I agree that the publicaiton of ISO 9001:2008 brings many things into question since it took 9 years to make almost no improvement. At this rate, ISO 9001 could become obsolete / behind the times and people will be really upset about having to purchase copies.

I think those interested in debating this issue need to see some real balance sheet data to support the debate in this thread. And to see a "process approach" or systems thinking analysis as to how the entire system of standards publication, distribution and sales works. Only then will we really understand how things work, how much revenue there is, costs, debts, expenses, and interacting factors.

I will not be researching these items because I am not complaining about paying for standards or not paying for standards.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
J

John Martinez

Does SABS charge for those 50 copies that will be in your mailbox this afternoon? Are you saying that it is okay to charge for standards if the supporting service is good?

I don't get it.

The members of the US Techical Advisory Group to ISO/TC176 now have to pay $150 USD every year to volunteer to work on management system standards. TC176 was the last United States TC to ISO to charge a fee for membership. For many years TC 176 members in the US did not have to pay for membership becasue of the perceived revenue from ISO 9001. The membership fee was implemented because there is an operating financial loss. Of course, there may be many factors as to why there is a financial loss and may have nothing to do with charging for a copy of ISO 9001. I just want to share that the member bodies of ISO may not be profiting on ISO 9001 the way we think.

I agree that the publicaiton of ISO 9001:2008 brings many things into question since it took 9 years to make almost no improvement. At this rate, ISO 9001 could become obsolete / behind the times and people will be really upset about having to purchase copies.

I think those interested in debating this issue need to see some real balance sheet data to support the debate in this thread. And to see a "process approach" or systems thinking analysis as to how the entire system of standards publication, distribution and sales works. Only then will we really understand how things work, how much revenue there is, costs, debts, expenses, and interacting factors.

I will not be researching these items because I am not complaining about paying for standards or not paying for standards.
:applause: I agree. NOTHING is free. Someone pays for it. If someone advocates not charging for Standards, then are they willing to pay a membership fee to receive those Standards. There is an overhead involved in ANYTHING THAT IS "FREE".
 
C

ChrissieO

I can understand why standards need to be paid for, but there are some circumstances when I find it hard to justify purchasing a copy for every single auditor. I have a team of 12 internal auditors + 2 lead auditors and the MR.

For example when the new TS standard came out with little or no changes last year how could I justify buying 5 copies for the TS trained auditors and one for the MR at 85 GBP each......and to make things worse it only comes in A5 and I keep all my standards in an A4 folder, we cannot buy TS to download in the UK.

We were pulled up in our last external TS audit in September because I was not using the new version.

Also, recently we needed 3 copies of 9004 and at approximately 168GBP and 15 copies of 9001:2008 at 80GBP all in the space of about 6 months.

On top of this we need 5 copies of 14001 and 18001

So as I said I can understand why we need to pay for them but I feel the prices are extreme.

Cx
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
I can understand why standards need to be paid for, but there are some circumstances when I find it hard to justify purchasing a copy for every single auditor. I have a team of 12 internal auditors + 2 lead auditors and the MR.

For example when the new TS standard came out with little or no changes last year how could I justify buying 5 copies for the TS trained auditors and one for the MR at 85 GBP each......and to make things worse it only comes in A5 and I keep all my standards in an A4 folder, we cannot buy TS to download in the UK.

We were pulled up in our last external TS audit in September because I was not using the new version.

Also, recently we needed 3 copies of 9004 and at approximately 168GBP and 15 copies of 9001:2008 at 80GBP all in the space of about 6 months.

On top of this we need 5 copies of 14001 and 18001

So as I said I can understand why we need to pay for them but I feel the prices are extreme.

Cx
One thing you might do to ease the burden is stop doing internal audits based on the standard.
 
C

ChrissieO

One thing you might do to ease the burden is stop doing internal audits based on the standard.
All our internal audits ARE process audits and all our auditors are experienced in process auditing but we do like our internal auditors to have a good understanding of the standards.

All our internal auditors are externally trained by NQA to a minimum of 9001, and 4 others are trained to TS 16949, 14001 & 18001 as well, with myself and one other Lead Auditor

We take pride in the standard of our internal auditors who are expected to audit anything from the receiving/picking processes to Senior Management Processes and understand the correspondence of our processes to the Standards. They are all also Six Sigma Green Belts.

Cx
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
All our internal audits ARE process audits and all our auditors are experienced in process auditing but we do like our internal auditors to have a good understanding of the standards.

All our internal auditors are externally trained by NQA to a minimum of 9001, and 4 others are trained to TS 16949, 14001 & 18001 as well, with myself and one other Lead Auditor

We take pride in the standard of our internal auditors who are expected to audit anything from the receiving/picking processes to Senior Management Processes and understand the correspondence of our processes to the Standards. They are all also Six Sigma Green Belts.

Cx
If that's the case, I don't understand why each auditor must have a copy of the standard. Can you put a single copy on a server where everyone who needs to can access it? It's at least theoretically possible (and eminently desirable, imo) to design a system such that auditors don't need to know that a standard even exists. If your system is such that auditors (and others) must have their own copies of the standard, it's the system that's at fault, not ISO's pricing scheme.
 
C

ChrissieO

If that's the case, I don't understand why each auditor must have a copy of the standard. Can you put a single copy on a server where everyone who needs to can access it?

We are not allowed to buy electronic copies of some of the standards in the UK otherwise I would have them loaded into the Auditors database for them to refer to.

It's at least theoretically possible (and eminently desirable, imo) to design a system such that auditors don't need to know that a standard even exists. If your system is such that auditors (and others) must have their own copies of the standard, it's the system that's at fault, not ISO's pricing scheme.

We look on our internal auditors as "Quality Professionals" not some one pulled from the shop floor once or twice a year to make sure "John" is loading the pallet correctly.

We work together constantly for continuous improvement bringing different quality methods and skills, the use of the ISO standards is one of these. I really can't understand how and internal auditor of management processes could be of any value to our auditing team if they had no knowledge of the requirements of the standards.
We do not audit against the standard but use it as continuos improvement tool.
Cx
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
I really can't understand how and internal auditor of management processes could be of any value to our auditing team if they had no knowledge of the requirements of the standards.
The requirements of the standard (not specific reference to it) should be built in to the documentation (and operation) of processes. If you design a process such that successful operation and documentation of it meets the requirements of the standard, you can audit to your own process requirements and be satisfied that the requirements of the standard have been met.

If you're presently satisfied with the efficacy of your system, that's fine. All I'm saying is that your perceived need for each auditor to have a copy of the standard is a "feature" of your system, and has nothing to do with how much copies of the standard cost.
 
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