Why has ISO 9001 Series been most popular standard from the ISO stable?
ISO 9001 series of Quality Management System Standards is one of the long lasting and popular standards adopted by the industry. The standard has been quite a hit with the industry for two reasons:
a. It helps an organization to put in a basic QMS where none exists;
b. It helps organization to benchmark itself through a third party certification.
Over the years the second reason has become more pre-dominant due to greed of the certification bodies to issue conformance Certification irrespective of whether an Organization demonstrates compliance to the ISO 9001 Standard or not.
What is wrong with ISO 9001 Certification?
“ISO 9001 Certification has grown like Cancer; however it is necessary to have it to stay in the business”- CEO of a large business.
“I complete all the records and update my documents couple of days before the actual Certification Audit” - Quality Manger.
“My Quality Procedures are perfect as it has been drafted by my legal team and hence certification is not an issue” – Legal Head
The above statements summarize the state of ISO 9001 certification process to a large extent.
Who is to blame for the sorry state of affairs with ISO 9001?
The ISO body is the primary culprit in creating a framework that was designed for the pre internet era and not bothering to approach the revisions of the standards in a way that it should have considering the way information is created, transmitted and stored in the post web 2 age.
The ISO body also to make the standard popular and easy to implement has diluted the provisions to such an extent that we have even crematoriums and hair saloons adopting the standard not in true spirit but to flaunt their certification.
The dilution of the Certification Process rests with the Certification bodies that over the years have diluted the interpretation of the standard in their eagerness to issue Certificates.
The Top Management of the Organizations also has contributed to the declining value of the standard by deploying Quality Systems that are just able to meet the whims of the auditors of the Certification bodies and not really bothering to implement the standard in a way that meets their business requirement.
Does ISO 9001 Standard meets my business requirements?
For a newly conceived Organization, ISO 9001 is a good standard to implement to quickly reach a level where running the operations of the business can be more systematic. After couple of years of implementation of ISO 9001, typically inertia sets in and this is where it becomes useful for organization to look at other industry best practices that will help them to track and measure performance in a better manner and mange business uncertainties.
What should I do to look beyond ISO 9001?
Since ISO 9001 is a basic QMS standard that fits all, it is important for organizations while implementing ISO 9001 to look at other available tools that can enhance the value from deployment of ISO 9001 and at the same time meet the business objective of having a certification.
What are the tools that can help me to realize more from ISO 9001 Certification Initiatives?
It has been noticed that pure ISO 9001 initiatives seldom lay stress on areas such as risk management, performance management and creating a well defined Job descriptions for key positions. These are absolutely essential for any organization to look at to derive maximum benefit from ISO 9001 implementation.
Having a risk management framework and implementing the same will help organization to focus more on areas that can have adverse or beneficial impact that can compound in geometric progression, due to absence or presence of internal controls, respectively.
A well defined Job Descriptions facilitates not only the process of hiring the best resource, but also helps in providing the most appropriate training for a person who is performing the role and also deployment of correct human resource.
Sathyavageeswaran is a Consultant who had been associated with Business Process Initiatives at several Client Locations across domains. Sathya operates from Morison Menon’s India Research Centre, in Bangalore. Sathya can be reached at sathya@morisonmenon.com