QS9000, TS16949, ISO9000, etc

I am a retired director of a small company (3 people). We were one of the first to implement a quality programme in our line of business - driven by MOD contract requirements.

We used a Govt. grant to pay for an approved quality assurance consultant. He was very good - he drew up a detailed systems based on what we thought we ought to do in order in for our finished products to comply with every detail of ISO9000 etc. As a result we had a system that any respectable multinational company with hundreds of employees would be proud of.

What a PAIN. Our limited skills were diverted to managing the quality control systems - when at the end of the day - our products were exactly the same with no improvements whatsoever - they only cost more, and were slower to make.

Ten years later, when we explained our system to QC friend of ours. He said we had drawn up a system based on a big 'wish' list. He told us to change our system to record what we actually did.

We have done this, and now our audit trail only deals with things in the manufacturing process that really matter us. It still has to be managed though.

Whether a programme like yours is necessary I can't say, but having retired it is not something I personally need at the moment. But there could be companies out there needing it in order to cope with QC systems that are totally unnecessary to start with.

Does this comment help?

I have some very specific thoughts and experiences on the mentioned quality systems - as to being a "bane", I can't agree. Why do you say this?

Because, most quality managers spend there waking hours patching holes and trying to get delinquents to close out the audit findings, Then sweat buckets both before and after audits as the're getting beaten by the MD/VP as a bad audit reflects on their performance bonus.

Having implemented ISO9001, ISO14001, and a corporate health & safety management system all at the same site (over several years, not all at once), here are my thoughts:

1) even if you are "forced" to implement a management system, go with the attitude that you are doing it so that your business will run better, not for the "certificate on the wall" - attitude towards why you are doing this makes a world of difference

2) if you implement to more than one standard, as we did, make it all one system, not several. The external assessors can be "managed" during the audit to the portions that pertain to their standard. And the workers find it more useful than several "dusty binders on the shelf"

3) On the document control requirements - use it to create a file management structure electronically that forces people to "think like the system". With folder/subfolders, you can have a high level that matches the MS requirements & sub-folders to organize things to departments or whatever makes sense to your business. Try the following 7 top levels:

- policies

- goals and objectives

- procedures, work instructions, etc. (documents that are inputs to the system)

- operating records, reports, etc. (documents that are outputs to the system)

- risk management

- audits

- management review

Everyone ranted and raved against the above structure until they finally had to use it. Then, those who had most adamantly opposed it became believers that it was actually very intuitive to use.

4) Make all of it electronic. The only reason to have a paper copy of anything related to the MS is for emergency use during power outages (so, health & safety or operational emergency procedures) or working copies (of drawings, etc.). Establish the document control procedure that any paper copy is not a "controlled copy" except the one copy of the emergency procedures. This saves you from having to go around stamping everything "controlled copy". Force people to stop saving files on their hard drives. It seems that the bad habits people had about paper filing systems have gotten exponentially worse with the electronic age. One of our most time-consuming tasks in adding in the health & safety systems to our MS was culling through the many electronic versions that our safety and environmental people had on their computers and finding the most recent version of everything.

5) Absolutely do not add any new processes or procedures unless required by the standard. For example, you probably didn't have an internal audit procedure prior to the MS, but it is a requirement and you will have to create one. Keep these new procedures as simple as possible. (Side note - it is interesting that the financial types have been doing internal auditing forever, but most companies weren't doing internal audits of their other procedures. If it is useful for the bean counters, it probably is useful for operations and engineering as well. Make internal auditing a value-added process.)

6) You will need a strong gate-keeper who is organized, sees the big picture, is consistent and persistent about the reasons we have an MS. Be kind to this person. The personality is a mix of border collie (herds people), german shephard (orders people), and labrador retriever (does some of the work - not just telling others what to do).

Happy implementing & good luck!

I have created/ integrated these systems in steel plants. last was integration of five different companies into a single unified system due to acquisition and mergers several times. Q-1 (ford) QS 9000, iso 9000, TS16949, ISO 14001.

There are two kinds of horses: "Show" horses and "Work" horses.

Don't confuse the two.

"SHow systems" have oodles of paper and seldom reflect the way things are actually done; they reflect how the "intelligentsia " thinks it should be. Bureaucracies love these, in Dilbert speak, these are recognizable as "Big Honkin Binders." Lots of signoffs, revision levels, and a new procedutre developed every time a claim pops up.

"Work systems" document only the systems you have, AND ACTUALLY USE< and reflect them AS YOU ACTUALLY HAVE implemented your process; In addition, they reflect ONLY THE SHALL STATEMENTS of the standard; NOT the should statements. These systems avoid signoffs, and are based on outlining responsibilities and authorities.

Normal everyday reports (You know the useful ones that you actually use to run your business) are used as evidence for management review.

All documents lived on a server, available to all, the document on the server was control document, paper copes were uncontrolled. Auditors who wanted to play cat an mouse on finding "stale paper " got nothing with me.

WHen the "outside expert" pronopunced what "we should do" we asked him to show us in the standard where it said what s/he described. Not finding it in the standard their way, we Usually (but not always politely) declined.

If your software system works like this, you will thrive.

If there is anything prettier than a clydesdale, I wouldn't know, but I dont waste much time on show horses.

milo

The problem with most management systems is that they are seen as a third-party way of explaining how you do things. If the MS can be absorbed as the true day-to-day MS and lived it ulitmately has bottom line management payback. The other thing with MS's is that they tend to be none visible and even less user friendly especially if you have a high turnover of staff or employ a lot of contracts in your company. All I am suggesting is that purhaps we could put together a collective user friendly viewing system so that a consistant MS can be had for the using or adapted to most ways of doing business and thus improve matters a little.