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Subject:ISO 9000 credibility From:Iain Harrison <iharrison -at- SCT -dot- CO -dot- UK> Date:Thu, 27 Nov 1997 09:15:07 GMT
ISO9000 just force you to define a desired quality level and formalize your
manufacturing process accordingly.
If you decide to produce crap, it is all right, as long as you have written
procedures that describe the correct manufacturing/checking process and you
follow them. ISO9000 philosophy is: it is up to you to decide what you want
to make and which level of customer satisfaction you want to get. ISO9000
does not care about it.
From the customer's point of view, this means that he/she does not get any
assurance about the fact that the product/service will be able to satisfy
his/her needs. The manufacturer might have decided to produce ISO9000
certified crap and the customer would get it for they
uncertified-but-hard-to-gain money! There is no way to know which quality
level the manufacturer decided to keep.
<<
At risk of straying off the topic rather (I'm on digest, so this may have been
covered already):
I think you are missing the point. ISO9000 never has been a system of quality:
it is a system of measuring quality. However good or bad your product is, unless
you have a clearly defined way to assess the quality of your produce, all you
can do is guess at the quality.
If you want to know the quality criteria the manufacturer complies with, you ask
the manufacturer. Having ISO9000 means that the reply should be accurate and
measurable.
Elsewhere, on another topic, someone talked of the need to choose two out of
'good' 'quick' and 'cheap'. The same is true of quality. Sometimes poor quality
is all that is needed. I really don't want paper tissues in solid gold
presentation cases. I don't mind the odd knot in kindling wood. I'm more
concerned with firness for purpose.
Similarly, the user documentation for a product may or may not have a bearing on
the quality of that product, but the documenting procedures that say how the
product is produced, and how the conformity of that product is measured are both
vital.
There is an interesting question about how, for instance, the user manual of
software that a company uses becomes part of the quality documentation. Even if
it is rarely looked at, being available for reference can make it a relevant
parof the quality procedures documentation. That can mean that we are all
involved in writing this stuff!
