The Pursuit of Continual Improvement
Jul 26
A common perception of the requirement ‘continual improvement’ contained within the ISO 9001 Standard (8.5.1) is that in some way it relates to an improvement of product or service. Some more serious thought might reveal this to be a misinterpretation, as the document is not a product or service specification, but a system for controlling the quality of the product or service through the output. Title – - ISO9001:2000 Quality management systems – Requirements’. So, in so far as the Standard relates to the organisations’ output, it defines a control and assurance system that should provide a measure of conformance for the outgoing product. The improvement requirement refers to the manner in which this control is affected.
Herein lies the real problem with the ISO9000 series, as it has little to do with management in the normally accepted definition of that word, and certainly nothing to do with business management, which is about efficiency, effectiveness and costs. Coerced into an ISO9000 program by (in the UK) a government sponsored initiative which planned to boost the nation’s international image for quality, organisations of all sizes accepted the standard and registration in the belief that this by itself would improve their overall status in their individual markets. At the beginning this was true, but when competitors were similarly equipped with their registered status certificate, and none of them demonstrably better than the other, buyers returned to their original practice of buying against criteria that did not include ISO9000 registration. Clearly the Continuing Improvement aspect of the document was either a myth, wasn’t being implemented, or didn’t relate to what the customer wanted.
It seems obvious that if a product or service has achieved an acceptable standard of ‘quality’ (whatever that might mean to the purchaser), any further improvement that is to be seen by the purchaser will be in the areas of cost and availability. These are not features that concern the ISO 9000 standards; however, they do impact on the customer’s perception of that product or service. Logically, they also impact on the task of Sales and Marketing people who have the responsibility of persuading potential customers of the uniqueness and superiority of their product. Here we find the Standard at its weakest and Continuing Improvement a sham.
If an organisation were to “take on board” a more dynamic approach to the management of the business, to the management of Quality if you like, and that approach specifically dealt with the cost of producing and distributing the organisations products or services, THAT would actually result in real improvement, and most likely continual improvement.
Why would this be different to the laboriously developed ISO9000 management system? For the simple reason that every top management team understands one language – money. A rationally constituted cost measurement scheme would include ‘error free’ cost estimates, plus actual measurement of costs incurred due to a failure to achieve the error free working. We call this the cost of non-conformance, or perhaps more acceptably ‘Transaction Costs’. If executive managers could be persuaded to abandon ISO9000 theory in favour of the collection of honest cost data such as this, business would – overnight, become more profitable because of the actions they would take – or have taken for them – to rectify the clear overspend found by this approach.
Generally this will not happen. Not due to any difficulty or inability to collect this data, but an inbuilt belief by virtually everyone not familiar with Eastern Cultures that error & failure is an inevitable consequence of human endeavour.
In the meantime, managers and their acolytes continue to hang onto the support strap ISO9000, firm in the belief that a documented system and its certificate will – as with the Wizard of Oz – be an adequate substitute for objective thought.
Ed. Bones is an IRCA registered Lead Auditor, a chartered quality professional, and a senior partner with The Meon Consulting Group, delivering expert audit and consultant services for ISO9001 & ISO14001 management systems. The company web site provides detailed information on various topics, and includes the generous offer of FREE Advice.