Archive for December, 2008

Why I think Santa Claus uses ISO9001-2008

Friday, December 19th, 2008

So many people I talk to think ISO9001-2008 (formerly ISO9001-2000) is a rather serious, and let’s face it, rather boring topic. I can’t really argue with them, but what I can do is try to enlighten people about how an ISO9001 quality system can truly relate to real life, and can truly improve your business. It doesn’t have to be painful and boring.

I’m always looking for ways to relate ISO9001-2008 with real world situations, and as strange and dorky as this may sound, I try to live my life following some of the basic guidelines of ISO. Truth be told, I lived my life like this way before I ever heard of ISO9001, which is probably one of the reasons why I got into this line of work. Much of ISO9001-2008 is simply common sense and good business practices anyway, and life seems to go more successfully, with less drama, when you follow good practices. But that’s not the purpose of this post.

With Christmas coming up soon, it occurs to me that Santa must have a good quality system. Here are some reasons why:

1. The naughty and nice list should be a controlled document. This list is the deciding factor on what kids get gifts, and which ones get a lump of coal. And of course we’re talking about a list with billions of names. Chaos would surely ensue if this list were not carefully controlled. We don’t want unauthorized reindeer or elves making changes to the list. And Santa absolutely wants to be sure to use the most current copy of the list, as kids can change their behavior over time to try to switch to the “nice” list.

2. Santa’s quality policy? How about “to bring joy to the children of the world”. If you’ve got a better one, please let us know.

3. Santa’s quality objectives? 100 percent of the kids of the world (well, the ones who believe in Santa anyway) get a visit from Santa. 100 percent of Santa’s visits must be completed on Christmas morning. The reindeer department performance must be 100 percent, but only for one day of the year. In the toy-making department, the quantity of toys produced must match the number of names on the “nice” list, with zero deviation. Too few toys will result in lower customer satisfaction. Too many toys produced is inefficient and wasteful, detracting from the bottom line.

I can only guess that all of Santa’s toys are produced in house, with no outside services provided. But if the North Pole uses outside vendors to purchase products or services, I’m sure Santa would have an approved vendor list, and an effective method of ensuring that vendors provide sufficient quality goods in a timely manner. Again, we want to make sure customer satisfaction continually improves.

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More on how to write your ISO9001-2008 Quality Objectives

Friday, December 12th, 2008

Felix writes: “Greetings, can you please send details about Quality Objectives explanation, including how to create Quality Objectives (Referring Quality Policy), how to link with Quality Policy, how to achieve Quality Objectives (With example). If not meeting the requirement how to close. Can you please provide all with examples.”

Here’s a stab at this:

Quality objectives should be measurable, and should be relevant to the various functions within your company. When thinking about what your quality objectives should be, try to think about what ways you want your company to improve your customers’ satisfaction. I usually try to leave such areas as pricing and sales out of the quality objectives, instead focusing on things such as quality and delivery.

Quality objectives should be written specifically for your company, and should be relevant to your particular situation. You do not need to “link” your quality objectives to your quality policy. Your quality policy is an overall guiding philosophy for your organization, its not something that needs to be measured.

Quality objectives can be achieved by continual improvement of your organization. For example, let’s say your company manufactures chairs. Right now 90 percent of the chairs pass your quality inspection, and 10 percent are rejected and reworked or scrapped. This is one area you want to improve, as it will help speed up delivery to your customers, as well as help reduce costs for your company. So you can create a quality objective of “a rejection rate for manufactured chairs of 5 percent or less”. Now you have a goal, an objective, something to strive for. It may take a long time to achieve your goal, and maybe you’ll never achieve it. That’s OK. The value of having an ISO9001-2008 quality system is that you should be continually improving your operation. If your goal is no more than 5 percent rejects, and right now you’re at 10 percent rejects, then maybe within one year you can improve your system to 9 percent rejects. That’s an improvement from 10 percent. As long as you can show an honest effort to improve, and you can show actual measured improvement, well then your company is doing better than before.

It is not necessary that you achieve your quality objectives, although it is necessary that your organization show continual improvement. If your objective is 99 percent good parts, and you’re now doing 90 percent, you might increase your performance to 91 percent one year, then 92 percent the next, then 93 percent the third year…etc. And that’s perfectly OK. In fact, if you do ever achieve your quality objectives, now you’ll have to change those objectives to be even more strict, as ISO9001 requires continual improvement. Or if there are areas in your company that are just about perfect, then maybe its time to look for other areas that need improvement. It’s perfectly fine to change quality objectives over time, as your organization changes. Your ISO9001-2008 quality system documentation is intended to be a living, changing document that reflects what’s going on in your organization.

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