A few days ago my attention was drawn to this question posed by Rob Thompson of Learn Sigma

The basic thrust of the debate was to explore whether people believed ISO 9001 standards actually mean anything. You’ll see from Rob’s initial post that he himself has reservations

This made me think too. So I entered a post some way down. In many ways I did have to agree with Rob on a number of points. There are certainly a lot of things ISO 9001 does not do. It does not, for instance;

• guarantee customer satisfaction
• guarantee continuity of business
• ensure you meet customer or contract requirements
• bestow anything near world class status on your products or processes

So what? You might think. Is it ever claimed that the standard does any of these things? Well, sometimes, yes. The truth of the matter is that there are a lot people (auditors, trainers, certification bodies, consultants) with a vested interest in the growth of certification. A lot of people who at one time or another could be tempted to exaggerate the benefits in order to get a sale. It happens. In fact it happens a lot, so much so that I do have to agree with Rob that few of us have retained any sort of focus as to what the standard may actually be designed to do, and what its primary purpose and benefits might be

For the most part, and from my own personal experience I have found the standard continues to serve a very useful purpose in two main areas, and they are:

1. As an aid to supplier selection. It is a useful short-listing tool to quickly get a long list of bidders down to a shorter and more manageable list of semi-serious contenders

2. It definitely helps organisations that want to throw a management framework around a disorganised system. Many organisations grow like topsy and after a while find themselves muddling along with different sites, different offices and different people having their own ways of doing things. So I’ve often been called in to help managers who just want to get to grips with what’s going on. I’ve implemented ISO 9001 in several organisations that have used the standard just to apply focus to that objective

Now, of course it could be said that if a company wanted to sort out its messes it could do that without ISO 9001, and that is true, but the standard does at least give an off the shelf structure and starting point to the project. Many people in that position are thankful for that, believe me, as they struggle to identify what to do, or even where to start

Once we’ve got traceability, consistency and a basic set of disciplines implemented however, I have to agree that I remain unconvinced that ISO 9001 has the sophistication to do much more

At the end of the 1990′s the ISO 9001 standard wen through quite a fundamental review and revision. It was acknowledged that “Customer Satisfaction” and “Continual Improvement” were the new “Conformity” and “Consistency”. Organisations were starting to look at the Malcom Baldridge Model and the EFQM Excellence Model and the certification industry (in my view) became more than a little threatened by it all. As a reaction we saw the terms “Customer Satisfaction” and “Continual improvement” over-layed on the old conformity model and some might say it was a bit of a botched job, lacking sophistication, depth and possibly even a fundamental understanding of the dynamics that drive and influence these processes. Another consequence was to give a whole load of ex-engineers turned ISO auditors license to indulge all of their Tom Peters related fantasies, which many did – and what they lacked in competence they made up for with persistence.  Now we regularly here ISO 9001 described as a model for continual improvement, a benchmark tool, or whatever

Well, it isn’t

As I said in my answer to Rob’s question, it may reduce the variation between your good days and your bad days, but it will not guarantee that your good days will be good enough. It will not help you lose 20 pounds in 20 days, nor will it make you more attractive to women