With the proliferation of companies claiming to conform to the requirements of this international Standard, we might well come to believe that product and service quality has reached its peak and every customer is satisfied with the performance of their ISO 9000 registered supplier. However, it’s entirely possible that we could have just misunderstood the actual purpose of this Standard and the registration process itself. Maybe the Standard isn’t about quality of service or product.
The current (year 2000) version of ISO 9001 is clearly focussed on the definition of a Quality Management System. This is by convention the mechanism by which an organisation defines and manages the quality of its output delivery. At the moment, this document is the most recent in a series of ISO Standards committed to the topic, and soon to be replaced by a 2008 version – but not quite yet. These Standards can identify their exact history back to the mid-point of the previous century, these having antecedents with origins most definitely back to the beginning of the 20th Century.
Originating within the manufacturing industry, and until comparatively recently predominantly focussed there, their original objective was to control the manufacturing processes so as to correct the errors endemic within the ethos of working class operatives. It was a ‘given’ that product (and now service) errors occurred due to the nature and attitudes of the workers employed. Rarely was it thought possible that errors and omissions – i.e. defects, could have any relation to the managers themselves or the management methods which were implemented within the industry. Standards were therefore developed with the sole purpose of identifying and correcting failings before they became a problem for the customer, or servicing the customer need for corrective action after delivery. E.g. warrantee. The working ISO 9000 structure is founded on the method Plan Do Check Act, and for Act we can fairly accurately say ‘Fix’ – although this isn’t quite how Act is usually explained in any sort of publicity information. Without a doubt, this is an implied acknowledgement of possible failure, as opposed to a program to avoid failure.
For those who doubt this is correct, consider how often you have heard the expression – it must be a Monday morning or Friday afternoon product. Perhaps partly as a joke, but coming from the point of view that workers on the whole don’t really care, and systems have to be developed to fix what they, the workers, do wrong.
As the years have passed, the Standards have evolved and their presentation has turned into a much less authoritarian form, but just under the surface lies exactly the same concept, that all work is prone to error, and management planning must acknowledge this understanding and act appropriately. The possibility that work of any nature could routinely be performed ‘error free’ has no place within this or any other Standard.
This specific failure to identify what is both a significant weakness and an opportunity isn’t just restricted to the Standards creators, it’s native to the majority of industry and commerce as well. A major supplier of domestic kitchen fitments has recently conceded that they have increased the investment in their after sales service operation – in other words, in the rectification processes following a new installation. The possibility that the money could have been spent solving the cause of the problem rather than correcting it does not seem to have been considered. Is it any surprise that organisations continue to perceive the ISO Standards as being useful only in the context of improving their marketing image?
Earlier in the 20th Century the managers of quality systems became besotted with so-called statistical data gathering and presentation. Based on a lifetime of belief-reinforcing experience that compelled them to believe in the inevitability of error and failure in any work process, they persuaded their masters to support the concept of Acceptable Quality Level (AQL). This term, when used in a truly statistical situation, is a reliable method of predicting the quality of a batch through the examination of a smaller sample. As applied within industry it generally became a justification for accepting the inferior in both service and product delivery. This then has developed into the League Table idiocy driven by government and their civil servants that contains the tacit acceptance of less than perfect work performance, so long as there are those whose performance is deemed inferior to the current product or service examination. League tables are a failure because they support the inevitability of failure. This is a failure to recognise the fact that the present situation arises from a historic perspective of work and culture, along with the absence of the realisation that it doesn’t have to be like it is. To quote a 20th Century Guru – Philip Crosby, ‘It costs no more to do the job right than it costs to do it wrong and then again’. Quality is Free!
So, as we look to the coming of yet another ISO Standard for a quality management system, what are the prospects of a turn-round in philosophy, and a drive for Error-Free working?
Don’t hold your breath!
Ed. Bones is a chartered quality professional, an IRCA registered Lead Auditor, and is a senior partner with Meon Consulting Group, providing expert audit and consultant services for ISO9001 & ISO14001 management systems. The company web site provides detailed information, and includes the offer of FREE Advice.
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