> Finally, I'll conclude my comments by stating that I think ISO 9000 may
> work better in a manufacturing environment, but I don't know because I've
> never worked in such an environment.
I did. I worked as a manufacturing manager in an ISO-lated factory, and
IMHO it didn't work for us, it didn't work against us. It was just a lot
of work. I tried to refocus the energies of the (Central) Quality Control
people in organizing a kind of Zero-defects day, 'quality is free' or
'quality is here to stay'. Only trying to help them to help me. This they
accepted as an excellent idea only after a very heavy intervention from my
side. Two weeks later, my manufacturing director summoned me down and
asked me why i had created so much confusion with the Quality Control
Department. They only tried to help me, they were overloaded with work and
if Total Quality days were so important to me, why didn't i organize them
myself. Thanks, but no thanks.
Things got worse when our top-management decided to enter into the
Baldridge award competition, perhaps in an attempt to impress our mother
company. Now i thought ISO-9000 was bad, but this really brought us into
Dilbertonia. There were endless meetings with loads of external
consultants describing in detail what no men dared to describe before.
And in the end ... we were not qualified to enter being an European
Daughter from an American Mother. No wonder nobody believes quality is
free.
Later i learned from Deming that 'The essence of quality is cooperation
and nothing else'. So i concluded that cooperation is connected to tasks
and responsibilities and thus with expenses: the better people are able to
work in accordance with their talents, the better they're able to develop,
the better the cooperation the lesser the expenses. So the real measure
for quality (if it is to be quantified at all; why do we have to measure
everything, compare it, give a prize? Didn't Deming say something about
this in relation to The Fifth Discipline? ;-)) is a kind of ROI based on
throughput and operational expenses.
I'll be back,
Jan
--Drs J.C. Lelie CPIM janlelie@pop.pi.net (J.C. Lelie) @date@ @time@ CREATECH/LOGISENS - Sparring Partner in Logistical Development - + (31) 70 3243475 Fax: idem or + (31) 40 2443225
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>