ISO 9001 is not working. Says who?
Top British ISO brass. Just recently, two high level officials from the UK spoke out about an effectiveness problem with ISO 9001. ISO 9001 is failing. The first suggests that quality professionals are failing, alluding to a compliance-based mind-set to auditing, while the second addresses this problem as a failure of organizations and auditors to understand and apply a process approach.
What do you think? In chronological order:
THE SIMON FEARY STORY
Mr. Feary is the Director of the International Register of Certificated Auditors (IRCA). He’s also the Chief Executive of Chartered Quality Institute (CQI). On June 23, 2013, Mr. Feary delivered the Welcome Speech of the 12th Annual IRCA Forum, held in Japan.
Mr. Feary’s entire speech (under twelve minutes) can be viewed here:
http://www.irca.org/en-gb/resources/INform/archive/Issue42/News1/IRCA-Japan-Forum-videos/
Mr. Feary made the following comments:
“This year, I have a message and it’s a simple one . . .”
“. . . the message is this: as a profession, we auditors are not doing enough. We are failing our colleagues in top management. And if we are failing business, we are failing the economy. I’ll say this again, because I think it’s important: as a profession, we who work in quality, and that includes auditors, are failing top management . . .”
An especially meaningful admission coming from such a high level official. Mr. Feary goes on to discuss the challenges in determining audit effectiveness. He says audits are supposed to add value to business, yet suggests auditors are too often focused upon compliance to assess effectiveness properly. Mr. Feary continues:
“The failure is that we are not able to connect with top management. The failure is that quality is no longer on the board room agenda.”
Mr. Feary recognizes a problem for quality professionals if top management has stopped listening to them because they don’t speak management’s language. ISO 9001 professionals too often speak ISOese, revealing a standard-based mind-set, precluding them from understanding organizational operations and connecting with senior management. Instead, they often continue to view organizations through the lens of the ISO 9001 checklist. Mr. Feary seems to agree:
“Something isn’t working when auditors approach an audit with a checklist in one hand and a compliance mindset. We as a profession are doomed not to deliver the benefits we all know we can deliver and should be delivering and therefore we condemn ourselves not to enjoy the profile and respect that our companies have valued . . .”
Audit professionals seem to be doomed to continue failing senior management and the organization and will continue to be held in low esteem until Mr. Feary’s concerns are addressed.
MY SECOND STORY
Peter Lomas is the IRCA’s Executive Director. In July of 2013, he had this to say (in IRCA’s INform magazine article titled, “ISO 9001:2015—the countdown begins”):
“Auditors also need to be capable of auditing the requirements, which is the responsibility of organisations employing auditors. The discussion, led by experienced and well informed people, proposes that a significant number of organisations and auditors never quite understood the process approach, and that some requirements of ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 have been totally disregarded by a large percentage of organisations and certifiers for the last 13 years. If so, there is an urgent need to start addressing this now, before the next version of ISO 9001 is released.” (Italics mine.)
The article can be accessed at IRCA’s website here:
http://www.irca.org/en-gb/resources/INform/archive/Issue41/technical/
GO/NO-GO GAGE STUCK ON GO
Currently, certification doesn’t distinguish between those meeting this fundamental ISO 9001 requirement and those that do not. Though a standard-based approach has been widely accepted since ISO 9001 was first released in 1987, it contradicts a process approach that has been explicitly required, yet largely ignored, since the year 2000 revision of ISO 9001.
From my roughly twenty years’ experience in the ISO 9001 business and in-line with reports from LinkedIn members from around the world, there appear to be more standard-based ISO 9001-certified systems than there are certified process-based systems.
This problem persists in both management system implementation and in management system assessment.
Organizations using the standard as a management system implementation guide are misusing the standard. It’s for assessing systems, not for designing them. Auditors who approach an audit with an ISO 9001 checklist and the intent of assessing conformity merely to ISO 9001 requirements are misapplying the standard, using it to find conformity without assessing effectiveness of a defined system (as required).
In either case, the standard is not being applied effectively. ISO 9001 itself isn’t broken, it’s misapplication of the standard that’s causing the trouble. ISO 9001 would work fine if everyone followed the manufacturer’s directions for how to use it properly. How can we expect good quality from misusing ISO 9001?
MOVING FORWARD
Quality professionals need to move beyond a standard-based (or compliance-based) mind-set preoccupied with conformity to specific individual requirements, a mind-set often generally overlooking the very processes under audit and thus the intent of the standard.
Auditors should focus upon management system effectiveness in order to assess ability to meet requirements: ISO 9001 requirements, customer requirements, internal processing requirements, and any requirements of other interested parties.
Once on board with the process approach, quality professionals will finally bring some glory to quality management and ISO 9001 (and W. Edwards Deming). Once ISO 9001 professionals abandon ISOese, management may start listening to those pushing effectiveness, improvement and PDCA rather than merely pushing conformity and ISO.
Bio:
T. D. (“Dan”) Nelson is a quality management consultant, author, and trainer
specializing in the process approach, ISO 9001, and related sector schemes.
Dan has roughly 20 years of experience with ISO 9000 and over 15 years’
experience with the process approach. Dan holds an MA in Business
Administration from the University of Iowa. Dan can be reached at:
dan@tdnelson.com
720.412.7994