I agree with all that's been said on the ISO front. The 'old' ISO
certification was hyped by those with a vested interest in seeing the
process succeed - i.e. the ISO organisation. If it hadn't pursuaded people
of the value of ISO 9000 certificates, ISO would have had to disappear up
its own tail end for having effectively failed to design a quality product
itself - to wit, a good-quality procedure for evaluating quality
procedures.

My own experience echoes that of others. ISO certification does (or did)
not produce a level playing field where a minimum quality level was
assured. I believe that this was the expectation in the mind of Joe Public
- that anyone going to an ISO Certified Company to buy something from it
could reasonably expect that that Company's ISO Certified Quality processes
and procedures would result in the client/customer getting what he asked
for. I once bought similar custom semi-rigid coax cable assemblies from 3
different companies. The cables were all to be made to the same (BS) specs;
they were just different lengths with different connectors on the ends. The
variability of the quality returned was a real eye opener - cables from one
company were beautifully made and performed exactly as expected and
required. With another, connectors came off, strands of shielding poked out
the sides of the connectors, pins were recessed, the lengths and angles
were wrong - you name it.

The other thought was, of course, that British Standards were so loose in
their specification that all the cables we received did meet it - that the
problem was not necessarily from the ISO Certification. I know that this
was the case when my last Comapny bought Hypertac connectors, and some new
purchasing officer, out to show he could get the right stuff at the
cheapest price but technically naive, bought Souriau connectors to mate
with them. Hypertac produce a Rolls Royce quality product with nice, round,
well toleranced contacts of great appearance and reliability. Souriau
produced connectors with square contacts made out of bent tin that had
tolerances you could drive the coalition forces to Bagdad through. These
"mating contacts" had as much believable relationship as Arnie
Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito did as Twins, yet they were to the same
spec. We complained to BS.

In a way ISO certification did more harm than good - it lent credibility to
those who didn't deserve it with no obligation on anyone to improve. Some
(bad) Companies saw the ISO Certification as their chance to gain entry to
the same exclusive club as the already genuinely good Companies were
members of through shear hard work and committment to quality. It didn't
take long for the truth to be realised, though, and ISO have thus had to do
some product improvement themselves. I hope that the new Certification
process gives us all a greater level of confidence than the old one did.
I'm still disappointed that there are no classifications to the
Certification - passing grades, if you like - as that would give the buying
public a better basis for comparison, but then who's to judge?.

My 2 cents worth this Friday in Singapore, so as you can see, words are
cheap.

Peter



"d. terstegge" <[log in to unmask]>    03/04/2003 08:58 PM
Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]>

Please respond to "TechNet E-Mail Forum."; Please respond to "d. terstegge"

              To:  [log in to unmask]
              cc:  (bcc: DUNCAN Peter/Asst Prin Engr/ST Aero/ST Group)
              Subject: Re: [TN] Board Shop Audit








About the general  (non-technical) quality audit: would it not be
sufficient to rely on ISO certificates ?  Would the average quality
engineer or purchaser do a better job than a specialized ISO9002 auditor
? And isn't a part of the advantage of the ISO-qualification system that
there's no need for further quality audits ?
Or am I too optimistic about all this ?

Daan Terstegge
Thales Communications
Unclassified mail
Personal Website: http://www.smtinfo.net

>>> [log in to unmask] 04/02/03 06:39pm >>>
There is a difference between a technical audit and a quality audit.
In
a technical audit, the auditor has to determine if the candidate
supplier can perform to the customer's technical requirements, e.g.,
assess their capabilities. In a quality audit, the auditor looks to
whether the candidate supplier produces to an acceptable quality
level,
has process control, documentation control, calibration control, etc.
Frequently these audits are combined, or performed in parallel by
different customer representatives. One must also look to see if the
candidate supplier has a stable business, has capacity to take on the
customer's work, etc. Supplier selection is a complicated issue and my
perception is that a lot of organizations don't give it the attention
it
deserves.

Blair Hogg
QA Manager
GAI-Tronics Corporation


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