Keep this thought firmly in mind. There are a lot of suppliers of goods and services in the world who are neither registered nor compliant with ISO9k2k who continue in business because they have customers who only demand good products and services at good prices.
Folks who gravitate to Forums like the Cove represent only a small slice of the universe of producers and consumers.
Sadly, in the same vein, we could probably poll ALL 80 or 90,000 ASQ members and find a substantial number who have no clue who Deming, Crosby, and Juran are and have never heard of, let alone witnessed or participated in a Red Bead experiment.
The bottom line is: those of us who are most savvy about ISO9k2k are most likely to have doubts about the value of registration versus compliance when market does not demand registration.
Folks with no experience with a non-system versus a system which follows the general principles of ISO9k2k won't understand the emotions inherent in the debate.
Heck. We have folks visiting here in the Cove who have never known a life without color TV who would be completely stunned to learn entire towns used to come to a halt when the Amos & Andy show was on the radio. My grandfather's movie theater scheduled films around the Amos & Andy show time and would pipe the radio program into the theater. The alternate was to shut down completely because folks simply wouldn't come otherwise.
The point is "if you haven't experienced chaos without a Standardized Quality system, you can't truly appreciate an operation with a Standard system." Folks who know only a registered system complain about minor aspects of nitpicking auditors because they never experienced a truly chaotic system with zero documentation and zero thinking about improving processes. These were operations with little or no regard for safety and well being of employees, little or no regard for the environment, and absolutely no tolerance for any input by a customer, who had only one option (buy or don't buy.)
Now that we are "enlightened," as customers, we recognize the importance of dealing with organized, efficient suppliers because it is in our own self interest to ensure a steady stream of products and services with a consistent expectation of uniformity. Some customers feel they need a "police force" to ensure stability to the supply chain and so the concept of 3rd party inspectors was born. Like it or not, the corporate memories of these customers goes back to the time of chaos and they don't want to return.
