posted 09 September 1999 08:10 AM               

Subject: Re: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 14:57:08 -0600
From: ISO Standards Discussion

From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish

Ralph,

You are right about the registrars probably not auditing to the 1994 standard after the release of the new version. But then again I think this shows that the registrars are not customer oriented and do not listen to the customer.

If the customer wants to stay with 1994 why can't they? If as a customer I am willing to pay you to come in and audit against something that you previously did should I be allowed to have you come audit me.

If I use the fact that continuous improvement is always good and the old should not be done any more then we would have no repair parts for anything that has been replaced by a newer more improved version. While I know there are companies that do not support older versions of products it forces users to buy new even if the old one is still the best solution for the user.

I for one think it is time that ISO realized that while the new standard is good for many (and maybe even most if I believe what you say) there are some out there that the new is not an improvement and requires time and effort beyond what is good for their particular business.

As to the many complaints about the old standard not matching current business, I do not understand how that can be true. If it did not, how is it that all the companies that have been registered have managed their business with it. Even the automotive industry patterned their version after it with adjustments they felt they needed for their business. And as I understand it they are not changing to the 2000 version. So how can it be better for all if one major business segment is saying they are staying with the old version plus their requirements. I would think if it is so much better that they would jump at the chance to go to the new version.

As far as listening to complaints from those who are registered, why is it that the ISO committee refused to listen to people who want the standard not to include continuous improvement? If you look at the original poll that was taken before the first draft you will find that over 50% did not want it in the new standard even though they thought continuous improvement was good. I guess they don't really know what they want and since there are people on the committee that know better than the people responding to the poll it should be in there.

Don't get me wrong about continuous improvement I think it is a good thing. I am just tired of hearing that this is what everyone asked for when you look at the poll results of those selected by the committee for input. There were some other areas that were marginal as well. I guess the committee would rather listen to itself than those who use it.

Even the poll was not a representative sample. If you look at the sizes of the companies that were polled you will see that it is not a sound demographic sample. There were a disproportionate number of large companies represented. The small to medium small companies which make up the larger segment of companies in the world were disproportionately not represented. And I believe that the committees involved have the same demographics as does the poll. I wonder if a poll was done cross sectional for all the registered companies that takes into account the size of the company and gives equal weight to each company if the results would be the same.

Yes small companies were asked to input into the draft if they were on line and heard about it or had someone tell them about the option. However, there was nothing sent by anyone from the registrars offices nor from the registration bodies asking for any kind of input. But then again what do small companies know. They just have to go with the flow as they say. So big companies on the committee (some of whom don't even work in an ISO environment) will continue to dictate how ISO should look. And the small companies will determine if they need to continue to be registered or not as the "ISO fad" wanes off into the sunset.

It is also interesting that there are numerous companies out there telling everyone that they need to get ready for the 2000 version now and are training people to it. This is again ironic since the draft itself says not to implement to it as it is still in draft. I guess the trainers know how it is going to be interpreted and that it is not going to have any more changes to it. And the poor companies who do not know any different are spending their money to be educated to the new standard before it is released.

posted 09 September 1999 08:22 AM               

From: "Vianna, Sidney"
Subject: RE: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish/Vianna

Phyliss,

I am surprised that as an advisory member for a Registrar, you seem not to realize that the decision of when enforcing assessments to a revised Edition of the ISO 9000 Standards are made by the Accreditation Agencies, and not the Registrars.

Any accredited certificate has to be issued and maintained according to the respective Accreditation Body rules. Registrars follow those rules. We do not make them. So, if the RAB decides that certified companies will have a grace period of 12 months before being held to ISO 9001:2000, Registrars will implement it.

Certainly, one could keep a non-accredited certificate to 9001:1994, but customers would certainly question their decision.

Also, you stated that registrars are not customer oriented and do not listen to their customers. I would like to mention that my perception is very different from yours, and in order to provide objective evidence of my position, I remind everybody that Quality Digest surveyed thousands of certified companies in the USA and published the results back in July. One of the conclusions was that, overall, certified companies are very satisfied with their respective registrars.

I would like to know what unbiased, statistically sound, objective evidence you have to present to support your statement that registrars are not customer oriented and do not listen to their customers. In this extremely competitive market registrars operate in, we can not afford not to listen to our clients.

Finally, concerning the changes to the Standard, I can only say that some people resist to change, others resist a lot to change, but the truth of the matter is change is the only constant of the business world. Industry Standards (such as ISO 9001) that remain static would not be serving Society's best interest.

Thanks and Best Regards

posted 09 September 1999 08:26 AM               

From: R2 Innovations
Subject: Re: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish/Robinson

[email protected] wrote:
>
> If the customer wants to stay with 1994 why can't they? If as a customer I am
> willing to pay you to come in and audit against something that you previously
> did should I be allowed to have you come audit me.
>
The problem, as I see it, with having more than one possible standard to which a company can be registered is that you end up with NOT having any standard at all. If companies could be registered to ISO 9001:1987, ISO 9001:1994, ISO 9001:2000, or ISO 9001:2010, what credability would there be to any of the standards? Also, what happens to ISO 9002 and ISO 9003 - they no longer exist! Remember, the purpose of ISO standards is to facilitate international trade by having a commonly understood standard by which company's are assessed. This would no longer be true, and we'd be back to where we were before ISO came on the scene - countries (and companies) measuring quality using different yardsticks.
>
> I for one think it is time that ISO realized that while the new standard is
> good for many (and maybe even most if I believe what you say) there are some
> out there that the new is not an improvement and requires time and effort
> beyond what is good for their particular business.
>
No one forces any company to register to ISO 9000 _except_ the customer. If you don't want to satisfy the requirements of your customer, then don't worry about being registered to any version of ISO!
>
> As to the many complaints about the old standard not matching current
> business, I do not understand how that can be true. If it did not, how is it
> that all the companies that have been registered have managed their
> business with it. Even the automotive industry patterned their version
> after it with adjustments they felt they needed for their business.
> And as I understand it they are not changing to the 2000 version.
> So how can it be better for all if one major business segment is
> saying they are staying with the old version plus their requirements. I would
> think if it is so much better that they would jump at the chance to go to the
> new version.
>
Since I have no knowledge of the QS 9000 world, I wouldn't even attempt to comment on this point. Is there any talk of them revising their current version after ISO 9001:2000 comes out?
>
> As far as listening to complaints from those who are registered, why is it
> that the ISO committee refused to listen to people who want the standard not
> to include continuous improvement? If you look at the original poll that was
> taken before the first draft you will find that over 50% did not want it in
> the new standard even though they thought continuous improvement was good. I
> guess they don't really know what they want and since there are people on the
> committee that know better than the people responding to the poll it should
> be in there.
>
Where was this poll taken - US; US, Canada, UK, & Europe; all signatory countries? I have not seen anything in the trade press regarding this poll so I'd be interested in finding out when and where it was taken. The only article I recall was one in Quality Digest (I think) that talked about the concern of US business that they were having a "made in Europe" standard rammed down their collective throats.
>
> Don't get me wrong about continuous improvement I think it is a good thing. I
> am just tired of hearing that this is what everyone asked for when you look
> at the poll results of those selected by the committee for input. There were
> some other areas that were marginal as well. I guess the committee would
> rather listen to itself than those who use it.
>
I didn't mean to indicate that continuous improvement was one of the things that businesses were requesting from ISO. Some of the complaints with the current standard had to do with its structure (20 disparate elements that didn't really flow together very well); its lack of coherence when compared to ISO 9004; its guidelines for impelementation; the terminology used that didn't reflect the terms used in business; the confusion that existed by having three different standards to which a company could be registered (9001, 9002, & 9003); its apparent focus on the manufacturing sector of business as opposed to all business types; and many other items. The inclusion of continuous improvement wasn't the sole reason for the revision, nor the most important aspect of the revision. >
> Yes small companies were asked to input into the draft if they were on line
> and heard about it or had someone tell them about the option. However, there
> was nothing sent by anyone from the registrars offices nor from the
> registration bodies asking for any kind of input. But then again what do
> small companies know. They just have to go with the flow as they say. So big
> companies on the committee (some of whom don't even work in an ISO
> environment) will continue to dictate how ISO should look. And the small
> companies will determine if they need to continue to be registered or not as
> the "ISO fad" wanes off into the sunset.
>
Gee, I seem to recall posts to this list and articles in trade publications talking about the upcoming revisions to ISO. ASQ and SCC (the Canadian version of ASQ, kind of) were advertising that copies of Working Group 2, Committee Draft 1, and Committee Draft 2 were available and actively soliciting comments be sent into their respective advisory committees for more than a year now. Sorry, if small business feels they were left out. I, however, must ask, "What effort did they make to find out about this revision?" > > It is also interesting that there are numerous companies out there telling > everyone that they need to get ready for the 2000 version now and are > training people to it. This is again ironic since the draft itself says not > to implement to it as it is still in draft. I guess the trainers know how it > is going to be interpreted and that it is not going to have any more changes > to it. And the poor companies who do not know any different are spending > their money to be educated to the new standard before it is released. > I have attended one such workshop, and I can assure you that the instructors were _v-v-e-e-r-r-r-y-y-y_ careful to spell out that one should look upon the current material as a pointer to where the standard was going. They cautioned everyone to use the material being provided as a means of formulating an initial strategy for their company, to look at ways the company could satisfy the possible requirements put forth, but NOT to begin changing things to meet this draft documentation. Talking with others who have taken different presentations has shown this to be a common practice. I'm sure, however, there are some unscrupulous individuals who are siezing this as an opportunity to make money on people's ignorance, and that is a shame.

I guess this is really my $1.00 worth (that's $2.25 Canadian)

posted 11 September 1999 05:37 PM               

-----snippo-----

Subject: Re: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish/Vianna/Naish
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 09:15:45 -0600
From: ISO Standards Discussion

From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: ISO 9001 Now - or Wait for ISO 2000 /../Naish/Vianna/Naish

>>>I am surprised that as an advisory member for a Registrar, you seem not
to realize that the decision of when enforcing assessments to a
revised Edition of the ISO 9000 Standards are made by the
Accreditation Agencies, and not the Registrars.<<

To some extent you are correct. However, as a point in fact when the 1987 change occurred NSAI required compliance to the changes and wrote up non compliance 6 months before most of the rest of the registrars. And yes I know NSAI is both a registrar and an accredited body. A second example is that some registrars looked the other way for an additional 6 months to a year beyond the rest.

>>>Any accredited certificate has to be issued and maintained according
to the respective Accreditation Body rules. Registrars follow those
rules. We do not make them. So, if the RAB decides that certified
companies will have a grace period of 12 months before being held to
ISO 9001:2000, Registrars will implement it.<<<

You indicate if "RAB says". And I am sure that since you are from DNV that you know you offer certs from more than just RAB and that each of the registration boards can have different criteria. So a company can pick and choose the registration board they want to use and change the rules slightly. In fact for a while RVA had stricter rules on certain things than RAB and it later changed. They seem to be much closer now but there are still differences between the registration boards and the registrars.

>>>Certainly, one could keep a non-accredited certificate to 9001:1994,
but customers would certainly question their decision.<<<

And just how many customers do you know that check with any regularity if at all whether their suppliers are still registered. I currently have 16 active clients and none have even been asked about being certified much less whether it was current for several years now. As a point in fact I have had some of my clients pull the original certs they got and double check the expiration dates. Interestingly enough, some registrars (and I won't mention who) have no expiration dates. So that forces companies to call a registrar. And quite frankly no one is going to have time to do that.

Also I had a conversation with a fellow board member at our last board meeting and found that in the automotive world the word spreads pretty fast. But in the rest of the sectors that is not the case. I have even seen companies who have been bought out who ride on the tails of the former company for their cert but have never been audited.

>>>>Also, you stated that registrars are not customer oriented and do not
listen to their customers. I would like to mention that my perception
is very different from yours, and in order to provide objective
evidence of my position, I remind everybody that Quality Digest
surveyed thousands of certified companies in the USA and published the
results back in July. One of the conclusions was that, overall,
certified companies are very satisfied with their respective
registrars.<<<<<

I agree that many maybe even most registrars are customer oriented. I was reminded by a friend that I copied on my email that it is the ISO committee not the registrars who develop the standards. I apologize for my error when it came to the point about the standards committee not even listening to the people in the poll they took. It was not the registrars who were not customer oriented in that case but rather the committees who did not even listen to the input they solicited and got back. And what is more surprising is the way the questions were slanted in the first place which would lead you to agree but the poll responders did not agree.

As far as the registrars not being customer oriented how many anecdotes do you want.

1) Registrar A has a number of findings at the audit. The customer asks for where in the standard there is such a requirement. The auditor says that their job is to make sure they have a good system not just meet the standard. When the company complains and asks for review, they are told their certificate will be held up for several months thus impacting their business because the company has customers who are waiting on the approval to do business.

2) An auditor shows up a half day late has lunch and goes home early.

3) A company asks a registrar to schedule the surveillance audit for a particular time frame since most of the management has to be out of the country just before and just after (with 6 months notice) and gets it scheduled. Two weeks before the audit the registrar calls and cancels. The company is told they have to do it when the registrar wants or loose they certificate.

4) A company schedules an audit and the auditor decides to go on vacation and gets back too late to arrive on the day of the audit. The company had paid for someone from another division to come in for the audit and had to sit around since the audit could not be performed. They also missed half the audit since it was a two day audit and they were scheduled to leave on the new second day of the audit.

5) I have had several clients who wrote to registrars becasue they could not obtain corrective action from their supplier who claimed to be registered. The got sent a copy of the certificate as a response or got no response. (I realize this is the end user but still shows an issue).

Now I agree registrars are pretty good at customer service and meeting customer needs but there are also problems out there.

>>>I would like to know what unbiased, statistically sound, objective
evidence you have to present to support your statement that registrars
are not customer oriented and do not listen to their customers. In
this extremely competitive market registrars operate in, we can not
afford not to listen to our clients.<<<<<

I do not know what you want me to produce. But if I look at the number of companies each year who change registrars from one to another I have to ask if they are so happy with the one they are at why are they changing? Some of it is due to mergers but if both companies are registered why pick one over the other? I believe the last I looked there were about 5% of the companies that were changing each year. Is this unbiased? I think so since I am not the one asking them to change. Is this statistically sound? As sound as any survey which has slanted questions and gets the results that were sought. (But then most of us that have been through quality classes know how to word our surveys to get what we want so I think this may be more sound since there aren't questions involved but rather decisions in the real world but I could be wrong.)

>>>Finally, concerning the changes to the Standard, I can only say that
some people resist to change, others resist a lot to change, but the
truth of the matter is change is the only constant of the business
world. Industry Standards (such as ISO 9001) that remain static would
not be serving Society's best interest. Thanks and Best Regards
Sidney Vianna<<<<<

I believe change is good in fact very good. Otherwise we would all be working in the fields with our wooden tools, or walking wherever we wanted to go, or running around with dinosaurs. Without change we wouldn't have this terrific medium for communicating world wide with the flick of a few fingers.

But not all change is good for all people. That's why we have choices in life. We can pick our car, pick our job, pick our house, even pick the person we want to spend our life with. (Unlike in former times when many had no choices at all).

My problem is that we are not allowing people to have anything but 2 choices here. Either make the change or don't stay certified. Why can't people be given the choice of staying with the old, going with the new, or giving up certification? One standard is not necessarily good for all and I for one feel that the third choice of staying needs to be kept. Interestingly enough there have been a number of other people who have said the same thing either here on the list or who have sent private emails saying the same things I have said. But I haven't kept the statistics on it.

>>>>The problem, as I see it, with having more than one possible standard
to which a company can be registered is that you end up with NOT having any
standard at all. If companies could be registered to ISO 9001:1987,
ISO 9001:1994, ISO 9001:2000, or ISO 9001:2010, what credability would
there be to any of the standards? Also, what happens to ISO 9002 and
ISO 9003 - they no longer exist! Remember, the purpose of ISO standards
is to facilitate international trade by having a commonly understood standard
by which company's are assessed. This would no longer be true, and we'd be
back to where we were before ISO came on the scene - countries (and companies)
measuring quality using different yardsticks.>>>

It isn't true today. If you haven't noticed we have ISO 9000, QS 9000, AS 9000, DS 9000, EN29000, medicals version with their added requirements. Each version or industry specific standard has varying requirements.

Over and above the different standards is the varying ways the registrars (sorry Sidney) and auditors within the registrars interpret the standards. We have seen the many questions on this list that have arisen due to interpretation of the standards. (And no I have already had several discussions with differing people as to what this section or phrase of the new standard says so it doesn't go away with the new version.)

posted 24 April 2000 10:51 PM              

Can't tell all the details now, but they asked me to ask this foum if there was any interest.

posted 02 May 2000 11:12 PM              

this is all about customer expectations, the customer is king.

If your customer insists on migrating to ISO 9000:2000, then do it. but if they don't, you are wasting company resources as there is NO reason to switch!

By the way, I am now isodug cuxz I can't figure Mark's password scheme.

posted 02 May 2000 11:28 PM               

quote:

---

Originally posted by isodug:

By the way, I am now isodug cuxz I can't figure Mark's password scheme.

---

posted 04 May 2000 11:33 PM               

Keep in mind, RAB is self declaired and has NO athority beyond consensus acceptance.