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on Sunday, February 07, 2010
Category: Event Wrap-ups
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(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
on Sunday, February 07, 2010
Category: Event Wrap-ups
(0) Comments • Permalink
Event Wrap-up: Economic value of ISO standards
After a brief introduction, Maria splitted the discussion group up into 2 teams. Each team brain stormed on the benefits and cost of ISO registration. The following is the summary of the discussion.
Benefit
* marketing/customer requirements
* Quality improvements
* protecting company knowledge
* independent audits/recurring audits
* flexibility of standard implementation
* corrective actions
* quality assurance - design quality in
* waste reduction (CAR)
* increase profit
* quality culture
* increase sales
* structural approach to quality
Cost
* audits (internal/external)
* implement for the wrong reason
* time required
* training cost
* consultant expense
* office expenses - paper usage increase
* difficult to incorprate with other initiatives
* over documentation
* over burden the system
* instead of paying attention to products,people pay too much attention to process and miss the point
* resistance to change
* auditor preference instead of compliance to standard (subjective audit)
As you can see, cost and benefit are equally divided. Maria pointed out that some of the listed benefit/cost are easy to measure, some not so obvious. It is important for company thinking of getting ISO registration to inverview the registrar carefully to make sure the auditors understand the business and can provide value added audits. There was one good example from the group.
There were some discussions regarding whether there is a requirement to change auditors from the Registrar to maintain objectivity. The consensus were that there was no requirements according to standard. Most companies use the same auditors for many years, the main reason is to avoid surprises and avoid spending time to bring the auditors up to speed.
Maria concluded the discussion with a "Diseconomies of Scale" chart. There is an optimum point in balancing the 2.
There was lively discussion regarding this topic, lots of sharing between different industries and companies. Thanks to Maria for doing an outstanding job of keeping the discussion wrapped up in timely manner.
Benefit
* marketing/customer requirements
* Quality improvements
* protecting company knowledge
* independent audits/recurring audits
* flexibility of standard implementation
* corrective actions
* quality assurance - design quality in
* waste reduction (CAR)
* increase profit
* quality culture
* increase sales
* structural approach to quality
Cost
* audits (internal/external)
* implement for the wrong reason
* time required
* training cost
* consultant expense
* office expenses - paper usage increase
* difficult to incorprate with other initiatives
* over documentation
* over burden the system
* instead of paying attention to products,people pay too much attention to process and miss the point
* resistance to change
* auditor preference instead of compliance to standard (subjective audit)
As you can see, cost and benefit are equally divided. Maria pointed out that some of the listed benefit/cost are easy to measure, some not so obvious. It is important for company thinking of getting ISO registration to inverview the registrar carefully to make sure the auditors understand the business and can provide value added audits. There was one good example from the group.
There were some discussions regarding whether there is a requirement to change auditors from the Registrar to maintain objectivity. The consensus were that there was no requirements according to standard. Most companies use the same auditors for many years, the main reason is to avoid surprises and avoid spending time to bring the auditors up to speed.
Maria concluded the discussion with a "Diseconomies of Scale" chart. There is an optimum point in balancing the 2.
There was lively discussion regarding this topic, lots of sharing between different industries and companies. Thanks to Maria for doing an outstanding job of keeping the discussion wrapped up in timely manner.
