What a load of hogwash …. ISO 9001 or any of the other MSS have little to do with improvement of a business. How can I make this statement? Simple I have been involved with this minutia for over 3 decades now, working in and with businesses who are registered to one or more schemes of ISO. I can find no real lasting benefit from any registration to ISO’s Management System Standards.
ISO 9001 is not a business focused approach to Managing ones business. ISO is basically a control system which focuses on processes and control of those processes completely devoid of any financial understanding or responsibility. ISO 9001 started out life as a system to assure supplier conformance. I focuses specifically on key items which assure conformance to customer requirements, such as meeting dimensional requirements for components etc. but has no focus on the financial equation having any relationship to meeting those customer requirements.
This latest iteration of ISO 9001, called version 2015, adds social responsibility to the mix of necessary controls. it uses the term Interested parties (which quite literally includes every potential person on the planet), while placing the investors and customers in a mixed bag of whiners, complainers, antithetical subverts, and thieves, all of them possessing equal attention by management.
The only business benefit I can observed being gained from this latest iteration of ISO 9001 is the benefit it will provide dubious litigators of every imagination who will use the Interested Party clause to file any imaginable frivolous suit. Companies who register to this latest iteration of ISO 9001 need their legal team to read the standard prior to them making any consideration for registration. ISO9001:2015 is a litigators dream come true and will no doubt line the pockets of attorneys for decades to come
So how does ISO assist companies in managing its business? This latest version of ISO 9001 attempts successful business management by relying on three key concepts
1- A revised version of the Deming wheel known as PDCA (Deming actually used PDSA)
2- Process management (understanding and managing business processes) … in a trivial way
3- Risk based thinking …. Not actual Risk Assessment and analysis but sprinkled bits and pieces.
All of this if well followed is supposed to guarantee the interested parties (almost everyone on the planet) they will be well pleased with the results … Then there is that old adage “you can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the timeâ€. ISO 9001:2015 attempts to achieve the latter, which is why its destined for failure in the first place.
Business is simple, everything in business is a transaction and is directly related to the financial equation. Maintain that focal point, permeating it through the business, and the business will never have use for ISO 9001 or 14001 or 45001 or 31001 etc. The problem with most businesses is that operational management and the employees don’t understand the financial equation and Upper management never seem to see their need for them understanding it.
Therefore a language barrier exists between upper management who reads the P&L monthly and the employee who is focused on doing a good job by meeting some vague requirement of product perfection, bound up in the company policy of exceeding customer expectation. The P&L is showing failure while the employee is blamed for attempting to do a job commensurate with the management stated requirements
Implementing ISO 9001:2015 in a business environment where understanding the financial equation is disconnected from the shop floor employee, will only exacerbate the problems already occurring with the financial success of the business. The potential for financial loss associated with this latest version of ISO 9001 is vast, and needs proper attention by upper management and legal representation, before any business dives headlong into its implementation.
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