Information AboutIso 9000 |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ISO 9000 | |
| iso standards | |
| #09000 | |
| production and manufacturing | |
| quality control | |
| quality | |
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ISO 9000 is an ISO Standard for Quality Management Systems . ISO 9000 was developed from the British Standards Institution's BS 5750. The ISO 9000 standard is maintained by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and administered by accreditation and certification bodies. It is widely used in manufacturing, although high costs and difficulties with implementation have led to many companies using alternatives such as IC9700 , or IC9200 , both of which are issued by the International Charter , or their own specific in-house "standard". Some countries re-label ISO 9000 as a national standard. (e.g. IR 9000 in Iran ). It should be emphasised that ISO 9000 does not guarantee the quality of the end products; rather, it certifies that a consistent manufacturing process is being carried out. HISTORY The history of industrialisation has led to many standards on quality issues. For example, in World War 1, a high percentage of shells failed to explode. This was traced to different definitions of an inch by the two major armaments manufacturers, leading to calibration Standards. During World War II , the United Kingdom had a serious problem with accidental Detonations in weapons factories. In an attempt to solve the problem, the Ministry Of Defence placed inspectors in the factories to oversee the production process; to supply to the Government, a company had to write up the procedure for making their product, have the procedure approved by the Ministry and ensure their workers followed these procedures. In 1959, the United States developed Quality Program Requirements, a quality standard for military procurement, detailing what suppliers had to do to achieve conformance. By 1962, NASA had similarly developed Quality System Requirements for its suppliers. In 1968, NATO adopted the AQAP ( Allied Quality Assurance Procedures ) specifications for the procurement of NATO equipment. The idea of quality assurance spread beyond the military. In 1966, the United Kingdom Government led the first national campaign for quality and reliability with the slogan ''"Quality is everybody's business."'' In 1969, the UK and Canada developed quality assurance standards for suppliers. By this time, suppliers were being assessed by any number of their customers. In 1969, a UK Committee report on the subject recommended that suppliers' methods should be assessed against a generic standard of quality assurance, to avoid duplication of effort. In 1971, the British Standard Institute published the first UK standard for quality assurance, BS 9000 , which was developed for the Electronics Industry . In 1974, BSI published BS 5179 , ''Guidelines for Quality Assurance''. In order to shift the burden of inspection from the customer, Quality Assurance was guaranteed by the supplier through third-party inspection, though none of the assessing bodies at that time accepted any legal liability for the quality of their decisions. The collapse of a jetty at Dover, which had been assessed by LRQA, an assessing body, and the subsequent court case forced a rethink. Through the 1970s , BSI organized meetings with industry to set a common standard. The result was BS 5750 in 1979, which however much consulation there was, turned out to be an almost exact replica of the DEF-STAN 05-21/24 series of military quality assurance Standards, driven by a Rear Admiral Spikernell who took over as Director General of BSI after a spell in charge of military purchasing. Key industry bodies agreed to drop their own standards and use it instead. The purpose of BS 5750 was to provide a common contractual document, demonstrating that industrial production was controlled . In 1982 the UK government produced a White Paper, entitled 'Standards, quality and international competition'. This introduced the concept of certification of a company's management system as a marketing tool. Obviously an independent third party was needed to ensure fairness. The original idea in the White Paper was that BSI would partner Trade Associations to produce industry sector specific variants of BS 5750, but since these variants were never allowed to exceed the basic requirements of BS 5750, and few Trade Bodies had the necessary resources, BSI became the first de facto assessors. The lack of technical expertise in the first assessors and the inevitable fact that the first generation of assessors were trained by people with purely military Quality Assurance skills caused many problems. At the time, military procurement contracts were given on a cost-plus basis, so on-costs such as inspection, internal audiring and procedure writing became profit centres. REVISIONS The standard has evolved over several revisions.
CERTIFICATION (CB) are accepted world-wide. The applying organization is assessed based on an extensive sample of its sites, functions, products, services, and processes and a list of problems ("action requests" or "non-compliances") made known to the management. If there are no major problems on this list, the certification body will issue an ISO 9001 certificate for each geographical site it has visited, once it receives a satisfactory improvement plan from the management showing how any problems will be resolved. An ISO certificate is not a once-and-for-all award, but must be renewed at regular intervals recommended by the certification body, usually around three years. AUDITING Two types of ( External Audit ) and audits by internal staff trained for this process ( Internal Audit s). The aim is a continual process of review and assessment, to verify that the system is working as it's supposed to, find out where it can improve, and to correct or prevent problems identified. It is considered healthier for internal auditors to audit outside their usual management line, so as to bring a degree of independence to their judgements. Under the 1994 standard, the auditing process could be adequately addressed by performing "compliance auditing":
How this emphasised preventive actions is not clear. Under the 2000 standard, the approach should be different, reflecting the different aspects and the processs approach. While the auditor does perform some similar functions, they are expected to go beyond mere auditing for 'compliance' and to focus on Risk , status and importance. This means they are expected to make more judgements on what is effective (or not), rather than merely adhering strictly and safely to what is formally prescribed. The difference could be exemplified thus: Under the 1994 version, the question was broadly: are you doing what the manual says you should be doing? whereas under the 2000 version, the question is more: will this process help you achieve your stated objectives? is it a good process or is there a better one/way to do it better? The ISO 19011 standard for auditing should be applied to ISO 9000. ISO 9000 DOCUMENT SUITE ISO 9000 is composed of the following sections:
There are many different standards which are referenced in ISO 9001 family. A lot of them do not even carry "ISO 900x" numbers. For example, parts of the 10,000 range are also considered part of the 9000 family: ISO 10007:1995 discusses Configuration management, which for most organizations is just one element of a complete management system. To the casual reader, it is usually sufficient to understand that when an organization claims to be "ISO 9000 compliant", it means they conform to ISO 9001:2000. The ISO website and documentation give more detail on what each specification entails. INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC INTERPRETATIONS The ISO 9001 standard is generalized and abstract. Its parts must be carefully interpreted, to make sense within a particular organization. Developing Software is not like making Cheese or offering Counseling services; yet the ISO 9001 guidelines, because they are business management guidelines, can be applied to each of these. Diverse organizations—police departments (US), professional soccer teams (Mexico) and city councils (UK)—have successfully implemented ISO 9001:2000 systems. Over time, various industry sectors have wanted to standardize their interpretations of the guidelines within their own marketplace.
CRITICISMS OF ISO 9000 Many companies have found the transition to conforming to IS0 9000 difficult. This, along with doubts about the fundamental value of the standard, has spawned many criticisms, including:
There are few objective metrics showing any effectiveness for ISO 9001. In 1997, two people took the BSI to the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming in an advertisement that ISO 9001 ''"improves productivity ... almost always gives an immediate result in terms of productivity and efficiency, and that means cost reductions ... pays for itself ... Staff morale is better because they understand what is expected of them and each other,"'' whilst being unable to produce any objective metrics to substantiate these assertions. The complaint was upheld. Quality programmes are notoriously difficult to quantify as Crosby warned in ''Quality is Free'' back in 1979, long before the first of these standards emerged. When an organization is measuring nothing, the only "quality costs" it knows are the basics of scrap and rework, and often even these are not being tracked effectively. Once a formal system is introduced, much more accurate data starts to emerge and initial costs of quality often appear to increase. Toyota abandoned the standard in 2000, moving back to their in-house Toyota Production System . One of the most concise and well-regarded statements of how to achieve quality is Deming's 14 points. A comparison of the principles of even ISO 9001:2000 against the 14 points still shows a considerable mismatch. QUALITY CONSULTANTS A rarely examined aspect of ISO 9000 is the consultant. In the UK the government initiated a program called the Quality Initiative with a TV advert showing paperwork being blown out of the window by the consultant. There were very few qualification requirements for the early consultants and the Quality Initiative rapidly became a paperwork producing exercise using the recently-invented word-processor. Success in the Quality Initiative was based on completion of the project rather than certification, quality improvement or bottom-line improvements for the customer. RELATED STANDARDS SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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