ISO 9000: Encyclopedia II - ISO 9000 - Criticisms of ISO 9000

ISO 9000 - Criticisms of ISO 9000

Many companies have found the transition to conforming to IS0 9000 difficult. This has spawn many criticisms.

• Adhering to ISO 9000 makes processes more consistent; to some proponents of continuous improvement, it also makes it harder to improve and readapt the processes.

• "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." It has been argued that it may not be appropriate to apply a process such as ISO 9000 to a field requiring creativity, such as software engineering, which is more analogous to designing factories than to operating a factory.

• Bad managers still manage at arm's length, using paper reports rather than knowing what is happening on the factory floor. ISO 9000 can reinforce this behaviour. Instead of being seen as an opportunity to improve things, audits often become quite confrontational in structure.

• Many companies only register to ISO 9000 because they are forced to by the marketplace — whether or not ISO 9000 is in fact appropriate to their business.

There are few objective metrics showing any effectiveness for ISO 9001. In 1997, two people took the BSI to the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming in an advertisement that ISO 9001 "improves productivity ... almost always gives an immediate result in terms of productivity and efficiency, and that means cost reductions ... pays for itself ... Staff morale is better because they understand what is expected of them and each other," whilst being unable to produce any objective metrics to substantiate these assertions. The complaint was upheld.

Quality programmes are notoriously difficult to quantify as Crosby warned in 'Quality is Free' back in 1970, long before the first of these standard emerged. When an organization is measuring nothing, the only 'quality costs' it knows are the basics of scrap and rework, and often even these are not being tracked effectively. Once a formal system is introduced, much more accurate data starts to emerge and initial costs of quality often appear to increase.

In Japan, amidst complaints of ISO 9000 undermining world-class thinking, Toyota abandoned the standard in 2000, moving back to their in-house Toyota Production System.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Criticisms of ISO 9000", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki