Good morning and good week to all technetters (and others, of course),
I find this thread very interesting. It started from a question (see the
subject above) - how to make a board shop audit. It was evolved into
opinions on the ISO-9000. I think that this twist represent exactly the
problem of the ISO-9000 standard. And, I want to be the devil's advocate.
The difference between ISO-9000 and the other standards, that we worked to
on a daily basis, is that the ISO-9000 DOES NOT REFER TO THE PRODUCT. Many
manufacturers try to claim so. The ISO-9000 guidelines forbid to print the
standard's logo on the product, or any related document. Many manufacturers
breech this rule. Connecting ISO-9000 to the product's quality is strictly
falsification.
I started my career in quality some 12 years ago, after nearly 20 years in
computers development. I decided to take this change because I realized that
different development teams that worked for the same company yielded
products with high quality variability. I realized that company internal
learning will be helpful to migrate the success factors from the good teams
to the worse. Later on, this was called "the learning company", "knowledge
management" and some other buzz words. I call it simply "quality". All the
other terms are only tools to achieve the quality. The way to broadcast the
knowledge within the company is to use the greatest invention of the human
kind - the capability to write. In other words - to document the knowledge.
In order to formulate the knowledge in a retrievable manner you have to
write it in a formulated forms. These forms are the procedures.
To say it in short - procedures are documentation of the organization
knowledge about the preferred behavior of its employees.
ISO-9000 is a quality SYSTEM standard, rather than PRODUCT quality standard.
This means that it tries to draft basic rules for the quality infrastructure
organization within the company. It lists requirements for activities that
will enable the company to ensure a stable, common quality level, and to
further improve it ("write what you do, do what you've wrote, measure what
you did, implement corrective actions"). The corrective actions model,
adapted to a commercial organization activities, are the heart of the
standard.
Like every common legislation, the implementation is subjective. The basic
interpretation of the standard to specific company's behavior is being done
by the company itself. Of course, every company will look for the best way
to comply with the requirements with the less burden. This may lead to
ridicules results. Add to it foolish auditors (not all of them, but too
many), and you'll find the reasons for the industry dislike of the standard.
Yet, its wide acceptance show that it has a still burning thread of wisdom.
To come back to the beginning of the thread: to make a good selection of
YOUR subcontractor, please verify that:
1. He implemented basically the ISO model of corrective actions loop,
2. He keeps a stable minimum quality level of his products, that you
can leave with, and improves it.
Regards
Ofer Cohen
Quality Assurance Manager
Seabridge Ltd.
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