VGTU
Faculty of mechanics Department of industrial enterprises management
Written by Benas Rimša PIVm-3
Vilnius 2003The history of ISO 9000In the early 1979, the British Standards Institute published a series ofstandards, known as the BS 5750 series, for use by manufacturing companies.This was based on the more military product-specific NATO manufacturingstandards, although substantially modified for application to QualityManagement systems. This standard was enforced through assessments andaudits.In 1987, the British Standards Institute revised the standard to includeservice-providers as well as manufacturing companies. Additionalrequirements on internal verification by the company were added and thestandard was generally clarified and strengthened. In 1988, the BS5750standard was adopted by ISO without changes and was publishedinternationally under the ISO 9000 name.ISO standards are recognized worldwide. In Lithuania, as in many othercountries, a lot of companies seeks recognition according ISO standardsonly for prestigious reasons – leaving quality management system control inthe second place. Ironical, but this is what exactly should ISO do – managecompany’s quality system, so it is a big doubt whether these standardshelps in reaching this aim. There are ten arguments in the case against ISO 9000: 1. ISO 9000 encourages organisations to act in ways which make things worsefor their customersThe requirements for documentation are a major feature of the Standard;they represent the Standard’s view of how one should go about checkingwhether organisations do as they say they do. The means for improvementusually lie elsewhere, but the documented system becomes the means fororganisational control. Inspection means independent control of work, the‘philosophy’ of the standard is grounded in ‘quality by inspection’, but: 2. Quality by inspection is not qualityInspection increases errors, adds to costs and decreases morale:In such circumstances one often finds that the ‘inspecting’ person does not
inspect everything, assuming that the ‘worker’ will have takenresponsibility. Both parties are caught up in the psychology of inspection– each prone to assuming that the other will be responsible. It is a recipefor increasing errors. Inspection of any kind always increases errors.Quality should be designed in.Rooted in the philosophy of quality by inspection, it encourages managersto control their organisations in ways that actually undermine performanceand, paradoxically, damage quality. These methods of control are the reasonbehind people’s dissatisfaction; they are methods of control whichdemoralise people. 3. ISO 9000 starts from the flawed presumption that work is best controlledby specifying and controlling procedures.This is why you find over-elaborate documentation, people having to do ‘twojobs’ – do the work then ‘write’ about it. There is an abundance ofdocumentation that only exists so that an external assessor can do his orher job. These methods are preventing people making a useful contribution,making them feel that the value of their contribution is, in whatever way,defined by procedures. Despite what many managers have been led to believe,to control performance by controlling people’s activity is a poor way tomanage. It is usually a fast way to sub-optimisation – it makes performanceworse.That organisations inflict such pain and suffering on themselves is itselfa phenomenon important to understand. It is inevitable when the principalreason for registration is coercion. Managers are fearful about what couldhappen if they are not registered. The focus of management activity becomes‘get registered to ISO 9000’. It is vital to them to avoid the consequencesthey fear for not having it. Management, when focused in this way, does notlearn.4. The typical method of implementation is bound to cause sub-optimisationof performanceIt does not start with performance, it starts with a view of theorganisation compared to a set of requirements. It is of course assumedthat the requirements will, when properly interpreted, have a beneficialimpact on performance.The focus of implementation is to create documentation that enablesmonitoring of the defined procedures. It is no surprise that organisationsget into the position where they ignore the documented procedures untiljust prior to assessment – when there is an unholy rush to ensureeverything is in order for the assessors. And the assessment is often atorturous experience. People do not like to be ‘caught out’ or controlled;they like to be in control. To be told that a third party is the judge ofone’s performance is positively de-motivational.5. The Standard relies too much on people’s and, in particular, assessors’interpretations of qualityThe defenders of ISO 9000 acknowledge that it suffers from ‘problems ofinterpretation’ in the hands of those who ’know no better’. This argumentalways points the finger at others – and if this were the only criticism ofISO 9000 it would surely be enough to put a brake on the Standard’spromulgation.Quality (following Deming) teaches that you should manage what could gowrong from a position of knowledge, not one of supposition. It teaches thatpeople need to be in control for learning, improvement and innovation tooccur; that customers should be treated how they want to be treated – afterall, the purpose of any organisation is to win and keep customers. However,this is not what is taught by ISO 9000 and its entourage.6. The standard promotes, encourages and explicitly demands actions whichcause sub-optimisationDictating how customers should be treated and over-bureaucraticdocumentation are two ubiquitous examples. The requirements for control andinspection are more pernicious forms of sub-optimisation. The consequentialde-motivation is, in large part, a natural response to being controlled.And ISO 9000 starts, a priori, from an attitude of control.The need for control explains the genesis of what has become the ISO 9000movement. In the Second World War, if you wanted to supply the BritishMinistry of Defence with munitions, you had to register to a standard onwhich, ultimately, ISO 9000 was based. The intent was to prevent accidentsin the factories and it solved an immediate problem – bombs were preventedfrom going off in factories. The approach was to document procedures forproduction and ensure that they were followed through inspection. This is away of working which ensures that production meets specifications. It is amethod of control that ensures consistency of output. It solved a problemof the time.7. When people are subjected to external controls, they will be inclined topay attention only to those things which are affected by the controlsThe main practical advantage of registration to ISO 9000 is that it enablesorganisations to tender for business they might otherwise not get. This isthe reason managers are prepared to pay for ‘ready-made’ manuals and obtainfraudulent assessments. It is a natural response to coercion, people‘cheat’ – they do what they need to do to get by, to avoid the fearedconsequences of (in this case) not being registered.It is not people – workers or managers – that we should be controlling.Quality teaches us that continuous improvement relies on controlling workusing methods of control different from those with which most managers aretraditionally familiar. At the time that out munitions factories werecontrolling output through ensuring that people worked to procedures, someAmerican munitions factories were improving output by reducing variation.8. ISO 9000 has discouraged managers from learning about the theory ofvariationManagers are easily persuaded of the benefits of having everybody workingto procedures. It appears logical and common sense to think that peoplewill do better if they are clear about what they have to do, and work isorderly. But when this is true and when is it not true? ISO 9000 does nothelp us understand the answer because it assumes that it is always true. Itstarts from the presumption that it is of value to work to procedures;procedures that are documented showing how work is done and inspected. ISO9000 also provides the rules for inspection by others to make sure that‘people are doing as they should’.9. ISO 9000 has failed to foster good customer-supplier relations:ISO 9000 reinforces an ‘arm’s-length’ view of management which, in turn,has maintained top management’s ignorance about what ISO registration isdoing to their operations in day-to-day practical terms. Without such first-hand knowledge, managers are unlikely to question either ISO 9000’s ortheir own assumptions about how to manage. And this is the final argumentin the case against ISO 9000:10. As an intervention, ISO 9000 has not encouraged managers to thinkdifferentlyISO 9000 represents further reinforcement of the idea that work is dividedinto management and worker roles. It was the fundamental mistake oftwentieth-century management, for ISO 9000 continues the tradition that‘managers decide’ and ‘workers do’. This tradition has led to means ofcontrol – through adherence to procedures, budgets, targets and standards –all of which cause sub-optimisation. It is a way of thinking aboutmanagement that began in mass-production systems and, throughout most ofthis century, has been the starting point for defining the purpose ofmanagement.This ‘command and control’ thinking. Changing our thinking about managementis the key to performance improvement. ISO 9000 does no more than encouragemanagers to follow a recipe that, because of its antecedents, reinforcesthe wrong thinking. The better way starts with understanding the
organisation as a system. It implies a completely different managementphilosophy.Analyzing these arguments you can come up with the various conclusions, butperhaps ISO in business is just like democracy in politics – if you knowsomething better possible to introduce for human kind, please tell it.
Used sources: 1. Magazine “Nauja statyba” 2002 april. 2. John Seddon “The case against ISO 9000” 3. http://www.iso-9000.co.uk/1/00.html 4. http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/socsja/Organizations/Org00- 0/stamatisR.html