Implementing ISO 9000

You may be in a position where your customers are demanding you implement an ISO 9000 quality system or you would like to do it for the benefits it can provide your organization. You may not have the resources to hire a consultant to help you. Can you achieve this task on your own, without the help of a consultant? Yes. You do not need a consultant to implement an ISO 9000 quality management system. You can do it with the resources you have.

Will a consultant provide you a better quality system than you can implement yourself? No. I say that not as a disrespect to consultants but because quality systems are ever evolving and developing. It's not where you start that is important it's where you end up in a year or two down the road. A consultant can expedite the process and save you a great deal of time. What takes you a day to do and figure out, a consultant can do in an hour or two. Based on this, why would anybody hire a consultant? The same reason some people hire someone to mow their yard and do their landscaping, that time is more valuable to be spent somewhere else.

You may be a position where ISO 9000 implementation is required but the necessary resources are not available to hire a consultant, what do you do? The first thing is to gain information. You need to become educated in the ISO 9000 standards and what they mean and their intent. Whether you hire a consultant or are choosing to implement a quality system on your own you need to purchase the following list of standards:

ISO 9000:2005 Quality management systems - Fundamentals and vocabulary

ISO 9001:2000 Quality management systems - Requirements

ISO 9004:2000 Quality management systems - Guidelines for performance improvements

ISO 19011:2002 Guidelines for quality and/or environmental management systems auditing

ISO 10014:2006 Quality management - Guidelines for realizing financial and economic benefits

You can obtain these standards from the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), American Society of Quality (ASQ) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The most important piece of advice I can give you, once you have purchased these standards, READ THEM. Find yourself a quiet place and read them. Read them several times. The reading is dull and the wording is somewhat confusing, it's alright, read them. These are international standards, not a John Grisham novel. You are not going to be riveted to the reading and hardly waiting to get back to it. You may find yourself more confused after reading them, that is fine, keep reading. After a several readings, it will begin to make sense to you. You will gain a new understanding of what the standards are saying and begin to realize what needs to be done and how to do it.

At this point, you understand the standard and what needs to be done. If you ever question anything or are not quite sure, refer to the standard. Go back and read it again. The first thing you need to do is provide an overview for your top management. If cost constraints prevent you from hiring someone to train top management, then provide the training yourself. Chances are, your top management knows significantly less about ISO 9000 than you do. That makes you an expert and should you travel greater than 50 miles, you can begin to charge consultant fees.

Your training to top management should answer the following questions, what is ISO?, what is it going to do for us? why are we implementing it? how much is this going to cost us and how long will it take? how are we going to do it? what role does top management have?

What is ISO? ISO 9000 is an internationally recognized quality management systems standard. It's premise is based on knowing customer requirements and continually enhancing customer satisfaction. This is achieved by developing key business processes, monitoring them with metrics against objectives to ensure effectiveness and putting forth effort to continually improve those processes.

What is it going to do for us? The adoption of an ISO 9000 quality system allows us to consistently provides products and services to our customers that meet there expectations and continually enhance their satisfaction. Why are we implementing ISO 9000? Chances are it's one of two reasons, one is your customers are requesting it or two you are interested in achieving the results in can provide. How much will it cost and how long will it take? If you complete it internally you can plan on it taking about a year (depending on your size and available resources) and it won't cost you anything other than what you are currently paying people. You should plan on spending about $1,100 - $1,300 dollars for one person to go to internal auditor training. That person can then train the rest of your designated internal auditors.

The registration audit will be $5,000 - $6,000 and the surveillance audits run $3,000 per year. Approximately, it amounts to a one time cost of $9,000 and annual cost of $3,000. How are we going to do it? We will perform a gap analysis to determine our deficiencies and develop an implementation team from that. We will track the progress of implementation. What role does top management have in ISO 9000? Top management has the biggest role. That group is responsible for the planning, development, maintenance and improvement of the system. Top management is expected to be actively involved in reviewing the designated process metric data and making decisions based on that data.

After you train top management, you must assess where you are now. There are most likely processes in place that are being done even without documentation. Write down all of your key business processes, accounting, purchasing, human resources, customer service, etc. After you get them written down, now you need to flowchart them out to document how they work. A simple downward flowing flowchart in one column with responsibility in another column and the last column has records.

Once you get them documented, now go through the standard and write down any process, clause or section of the standard that your current process does not address. These are the gaps in your system. They are the areas the standard states needs to be addressed that you are not. Once you have this, put it into a document where you can track the action against who is responsible and time line agreed to. Similar to this:

Action Responsible Date Develop internal audit process Joe F. 11-14-06 Train internal auditors Tom C 12-18-06

After you have transferred the actions needed into the above format, you have developed your implementation plan. Ensure this plan is reviewed and monitored by top management frequently. They must be kept in the loop. At some point of the implementation you will want to train the entire workforce on ISO 9000. Work out a schedule that is flexible. It does not have to be extremely detailed, but provide a good overview of what ISO 9000 is, why it is being implemented and how it will impact them. Good luck, you can do it.

Robert Badner is a freelance writer for Innovations for Quality, LLC. Innovations for Quality provides live, interactive, online training for ISO 9000 and ASQ Certification. You can visit their websites at http://www.asqcertification.org and http://iso9000training.org

ISO9000 & Beyond

To be successful, organisations must prove themselves to be indispensable to their customers, be attuned to their employees' needs, be willing to partner with their suppliers, and be considerate of the social, environmental, and safety outcomes of their performance. These rather new and expanded objectives of business operations, are the main pillars of business excellence.

Samson and Challis (2002) studied leading international organisations in an effort to determine why some were more successful than others in their pursuit of excellence. They identified a total of 14 principles that served as catalysts for business excellence. The extent to which each organisation embodied these principles appeared to be directly related to the speed of its journey towards excellence.

Furthermore, the EFQM Excellence Model, which is used to adjudicate the European Quality Award, and the most frequently discussed model in quality literature (van der Wiele et aI., 1995, 2001), uses self-assessment as a tool to identify organisational strengths, as well as areas in which there exists room for improvement. Its outcome is a structured plan for amelioration, which is subsequently monitored for progress. In addition to this self-assessment component, the EFQM assists organisations with their continuous improvement initiatives by facilitating gauging of progress against measures of total quality management, identification of improvement opportunities benchmarking and organisational learning (McAdam and Kelly, 2002).

Truly effective use of the excellence models for continuous improvement requires the input of management and employees. For maximum benefit, it must be effectively marketed by top management and internalised by the staff of the organisation (van der Wiele et aI., 2000). Also, to be optimally effective, quality improvements should be prioritised and should focus on the results category of a business excellence model such as the EFQM Excellence Model (EFQM, 1999; Seghezzi, 2001), the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA, 2002), or the Canadian Framework for Business Excellence (CFBE, 2002).

Quality management The family of ISO 9000 standards can be regarded as the foundation on which organisations can build their excellence programs. The success of a quality management program that builds upon the foundation of the ISO 9000 system has been said to relate to the original motivation for registration (van der Wiele et aI., 2001). The message is that the added value that an organisation derives from the ISO 9000 standards should be a result of that organisation's motives for, and approach to, implementation (Cobb, 2003; Gotzamani and Tsiotras, 2002; Singels et aI., 2001). Issues such as organisation, internal and external communications, employee awareness of quality, product conformance and customer satisfaction are all addressed within the ISO 9000 system, simplifying management commitment to quality. This can be a driving force to go beyond and achieve business excellence. However, if not done properly, it is also possible that implementation of ISO 9000 may lead to excessive emphasis on the documented procedures and less emphasis on achieving business objectives (Gotzamani and Tsiotras, 2002).

The importance and relevance of quality cannot be overstated. In recent decades, public, private, and third-sector organisations have been awakened to the necessity of creating and ensuring quality in every aspect of their operations. Far beyond "permitting things to run smoothly", an emphasis on quality in management systems is now considered essential to an organisation's prosperity. Globalisation and an enhanced concept of corporate liability are two important societal trends contributing to this emphasis on quality. There are numerous reports in the literature that describe quality management practices and the benefits that emanate from implementation of an ISO 9000 system. Many of these are case studies or reports of the benefits and drawbacks of such systems. The emphasis is on continuous improvement which is beyond simple conformance to the ISO 9000 standards.

The Balanced Scorecard The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is an instrument which translates the mission and strategy of an organisation into a broad collection of action metrics and indicators, and which subsequently provides the structure necessary to serve as control and strategic measurement system (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). The BSC is applicable to any type of organisation, albeit with modifications. For example, a BSC for non-profit organisations must be modified to include a mission perspective and any other additional perspectives which provide specific information on social demographic factors regarding the organisation's environment. Viewed as a performance measurement system (PMS), the BSC is not a new tool as PMSs have existed for a long time in all organisations and in most cultures, in one form or another. Hence the novelty of the BSC does not reside in its existence but rather in the attempt to achieve standardisation via conventions and universal rules (Urrutia de Hoyos, 2001).

The BSC's most standardised antecedent is the "tableau de bord" (Mallo and Merlo, 1995), a tool utilised principally by French companies, and whose configuration and conceptual basis is very similar to the BSC. One explanation for the lack of standardisation of PMSs along the line of the tableau de bord and BSC is certainly the lack of publicised information regarding their existence due to its being an excessively strategic tool; due to their strategic nature, organisations are very reluctant to disclose their existence and utilisation.

Development of the BSC The development of the BSC has gone through three distinct phases.

The First phase Initially the BSC was intended as a measurement tool, with an operational and tactical focus. It was a collection of indicators arranged by perspectives or key areas, which permitted the identification of the determinants of the performance of a business. The original objective was to overcome the limitations of using only financial indicators. These last only provided information about actual, past performance, and failed to provide information on the drivers of future performance (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). The four BSC perspectives - financial, customer, internal processes, learning and growth - were selected on the basis of the results of a study by David Norton and Harvard University (Kaplan and Norton, 1992).

The Second phase In the process of identifying indicators for each of the four perspectives, it was discovered that by developing strategy maps, not only could the appropriate indicators be identified, but also management could utilise the BSC for strategic planning. In the first phase, indicators were identified subsequent to the development and definition of the organisation's strategy, and had an operational and/or tactical focus. During this phase, it was discovered that it was not enough to simply identify indicators, it was also necessary that the indicators were extracted directly from the strategic plan. This so as to identify, and explicitly describe, the causal relationships with the organisation's strategy. In other words, the indicators were identified prior to the development and definition of the organisation's strategy, and as such playa key role in the development and definition of the strategy. The act of measurement has consequences that exceed simply providing information on past results. It also directs attention to the future, since the indicators selected by management are 'de facto' those which are important to management. Hence, with a clearly defined strategy, coherently communicated and aligned with change drivers, what was initially an information/measurement tool, and part of the management control function, was converted into a tool for strategic management (Kaplan and Norton, 2000) and a part of the strategy formation process.

The Third phase The BSC communicates the organisation's strategic plan via maps in which the cause-effect relationships between the different strategic objectives can be visualised. This permits management to utilise the BSC as a tool for change management leading to the achievement of Business Excellence.

Conclusion This article explored the broad issues related to business excellence and the application of ISo 9000 and the BSC as the first steps in achieving excellence. ISO 9000 and the BSC aim at assisting firms to develop systems and procedures which allow them to achieve business excellence by becoming more customer-oriented. The implementation of such systems requires on-going support from senior management; taking into consideration the role of internal reporting and operational control systems to monitor and proactively adapt to changing business needs.

Sandro Azzopardi is a professional author who writes articles on his web site and local newspapers. http://www.theinfopit.com/business/iso9000/iso9000andbeyond-1.php

ISO 9001 Software

ISO 9001 Software

Companies that need quality management systems realize that products like ISO 9001 software are important tools to insure their product safety, consistency and profitability. Using ISO 9001 software can help guarantee that any company can monitor productivity, customer satisfaction and product quality with reports that contain solid information. This information is now vital to management in order for maximum efficiency in any industry. This is why ISO 9001 software is vital to any sized company. Continuous improvement means continuous profitability. Here are just a few reasons why:

o Companies increase sales because of better performance, quality, and delivery. This propels you ahead of your competition.

o ISO 9001 software helps retain employees and attract more highly qualified employees because they are assured of a controlled and consistent work environment.

o The experience of a more professional workplace boosts employee morale.

o Reduced operating costs dramatically increase your company?s productivity, leading to higher profitability.

o Customer satisfaction and higher profitability expand your market share and demand for your consistently higher product quality.

o When you're compliant or certified to the appropriate standard, the businesses that work with you know that quality objectives, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction are your goals. Many companies require that their suppliers are ISO 9001 compliant; therefore, once you're certified, your opportunities increase.

ISO 9001 software has be utilized and has developed experience of helping manufacturing, service, and distribution organizations to be more efficient and more profitable through continuous improvement programs. We help you to implement the time-tested methods of continuous improvement to measure performance, analyze data, and apply the appropriate process changes. This includes using ISO 9001 software.

ISO 9001 software also offers a suite of modules to enable you to manage the document management and ISO 9001 Compliance Management process. These modules enable complete transparent system measurement with targeted action items ensuring all persons are notified of tasks and carry them out in a prompt and efficient manner.

ISO 9001 software provides training in there software and also bring extensive experience in implementing the ISO 9001 software in various environments.

Training Options

There are also three other ways ISO delivers training to help companies comply with industry standards:

1. Full training program help for administrators of our ISO 9001 software program at your location this training includes full orientation to our document management, corrective action calibration records , training records and numerous other features of our software

2. General users training to assist users in the company in utilizing the ISO 9001 software system in there day to day environment for document management and responding to action items.

3. Upgrade training program help for companies who experience personnel turnover to bring the new person up to speed on the ISO 9001 software system.

4. Overview seminars providing orientation sessions for those new employees or those new to the software

The ISO 9001 software comes from extensive experience introducing effective and affordable quality management systems to a wide variety of industries and service organizations. Numerous companies who have worked with us reap the benefits of increased profitability, enhanced customer relations, elevated employee morale, and increased sales. Clients enjoy our flexibility in organizing the process around their needs and their schedules. We have a proven track record of success and customer satisfaction.

Becky King is a well respected software reviewer who lives in California with her family and two dogs.

Learn More at: www.interaxgrp.com

redkoch@yahoo.com

ISO 9001 Software

Companies that need quality management systems realize that products like ISO 9001 software are important tools to insure their product safety, consistency and profitability. Using ISO 9001 software can help guarantee that any company can monitor productivity, customer satisfaction and product quality with reports that contain solid information. This information is now vital to management in order for maximum efficiency in any industry. This is why ISO 9001 software is vital to any sized company. Continuous improvement means continuous profitability. Here are just a few reasons why:

o Companies increase sales because of better performance, quality, and delivery. This propels you ahead of your competition.

o ISO 9001 software helps retain employees and attract more highly qualified employees because they are assured of a controlled and consistent work environment.

o The experience of a more professional workplace boosts employee morale.

o Reduced operating costs dramatically increase your company's productivity, leading to higher profitability.

o Customer satisfaction and higher profitability expand your market share and demand for your consistently higher product quality.

o When you're compliant or certified to the appropriate standard, the businesses that work with you know that quality objectives, continuous improvement, and customer satisfaction are your goals. Many companies require that their suppliers are ISO 9001 compliant; therefore, once you're certified, your opportunities increase.

ISO 9001 software has be utilized and has developed experience of helping manufacturing, service, and distribution organizations to be more efficient and more profitable through continuous improvement programs. We help you to implement the time-tested methods of continuous improvement to measure performance, analyze data, and apply the appropriate process changes. This includes using ISO 9001 software.

ISO 9001 software also offers a suite of modules to enable you to manage the document management and ISO 9001 Compliance Management process. These modules enable complete transparent system measurement with targeted action items ensuring all persons are notified of tasks and carry them out in a prompt and efficient manner.

ISO 9001 software provides training in there software and also bring extensive experience in implementing the ISO 9001 software in various environments.

Training Options There are also three other ways ISO delivers training to help companies comply with industry standards:

1. Full training program help for administrators of our ISO 9001 software program at your location this training includes full orientation to our document management, corrective action calibration records , training records and numerous other features of our software 2. General users training to assist users in the company in utilizing the ISO 9001 software system in there day to day environment for document management and responding to action items. 3. Upgrade training program help for companies who experience personnel turnover to bring the new person up to speed on the ISO 9001 software system. 4. Overview seminars providing orientation sessions for those new employees or those new to the software

The ISO 9001 software comes from extensive experience introducing effective and affordable quality management systems to a wide variety of industries and service organizations. Numerous companies who have worked with us reap the benefits of increased profitability, enhanced customer relations, elevated employee morale, and increased sales. Clients enjoy our flexibility in organizing the process around their needs and their schedules. We have a proven track record of success and customer satisfaction.

Learn More at: www.interaxgrp.com

Becky King is a well respected software reviewer who lives in California with her family and two dogs.

ISO 4217 in Forex Trading

ISO 4217 is an international standard describing three letter codes to define the names of currencies established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The first two letters of the code are the two letters of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (which are similar to those used for national top-level domains on the internet) and the third is usually the initial of the currency itself. So Japan's currency code becomes JPY—JP for Japan and Y for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the names dollar, franc and pound being used in dozens of different countries, all with wildly differing values.

The standard also defines the relationship between the major currency unit and any minor currency unit. Often, the minor currency unit has a value that is 1/100 of the major unit, but 1/10 or 1/1000 are also common. Some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all. Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya (UM) = 5 khoums, and Madagascar has 1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja.

ISO 4217 includes codes for not only currencies, but also codes for precious metals (gold, silver, palladium and platinum; normally measured in troy ounces) and certain other entities used in international finance, e.g. Special Drawing Rights. There are also special codes allocated for testing purposes (XTS), and to indicate no currency transactions (XXX). These codes all begin with the letter "X". ISO 3166 never assigns country codes beginning with "X", so ISO 4217 can use "X" codes for non-country-specific currencies without risk of clashing with future country codes.

Supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC and the CFA franc BCEAO are normally also represented by codes beginning with an "X". However, the Euro is represented by the code EUR; although EU is not an ISO 3166-1 country code, it was used anyway, and in order to do so EU was added to the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list to represent the European Union. The predecessor to the Euro, the European Currency Unit, had the code XEU.

More detail about ISO 4217 can be found on wikipedia.org

The author blog: Marketiva Forex

Is ISO 9001 2000 Right For My Business?

 

Firstly you should decide your own reasoning behind considering ISO 9001 2000 registration for your business.

Is the number of registrations in your market sector increasing?

Are your competitors seeking registration?

Are your customers asking about registration?

Are registrations increasing in your industry?

Are your customers asking you to become registered?

Have your group HQ asked you to gain registration?

Do you want to reap the financial benefits of registration?

Have the number of customer or consumer complaints increased?

Preventable errors reoccur again and again?

It is not possible to state exactly what benefits your organization will gain by having a formal quality system, primarily because each organisation is different. However, I think it is fair to say that most organisations will benefit from having a formalised Quality Management system where:

Work proceeds in an orderly and predictable way.

The same old preventable errors stop occurring.

Customer and consumer complaints fall dramatically.

Your Management System improves.

Internal communication within your organisation improves.

Returned product from customers reduces week on week.

The quality of your product and or service improves.

The level of customer and employee satisfaction improves.

Your organisation produces quality data to improve your business.

By now you should have a reasonable idea of whether or not ISO 9001 2000 registration is right for your organisation and whether or not you will gain financially from adopting the ISO 9001 2000 standard as a method of running your business effectively and efficiently.

If you are now seriously considering seeking registration to the ISO 9001 2000 standard you must begin to understand what the standard requires of an organization. There are many books and resources available which discuss implementing the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard into an organisation including the articles on this web site.

You may like to begin your ISO 9001 2000 education by reading the various articles on this web site. You will find they cover a broad spectrum of businesses, There is also an excellent Q&A sectionthat will answer the majority of commonly asked questions about ISO 9001 2000 registration and related topics.

Alternatively you could take an ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management training course, there are many available and they cater for beginners right through to ISO 9001 2000 experts.

To determine the amount of input required by your organisation to comply with the requirements of the ISO 9001 2000 standard will require that you assess your existing management system. You could to fetch in a consultant at this stage, a consultant will be able to identify exactly what your organisation needs to do in order to achieve the requirements of the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard.

Many organisations opt to carry out a gap analysis audit using a member of staff. However, the initial gap analysis audit is arguably the most important stage in the ISO 9001 2000 registration process. If the initial gap analysis is incorrect then both financial and human resources will be wasted. For this reason alone it is well worth seeking professional help from a consultant to carry out the gap analysis for you.

Many organisations who opt to jump straight into the Gap Analysis process themselves can often waste time, money and resources by not fully understanding the intent of the ISO 9001 2000 standard. Whereas seeking professional advice from a consultant will set your organisation on the right path with clear instructions on who, what, where, why, when and how things should be done.

If on the other hand your organization already has a very good understanding of the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard and has:

A documented Quality policy.

Been setting and using documented Quality objectives.

Customer and consumer complaints fall dramatically.

Documented Top management reviews of your Quality Management System.

A documented top level Quality Management System Manual.

Documented effective and efficient process procedures and or work instructions.

Documented employee skills and training records which are regularly reviewed.

Documented and compliant Quality Management System Audits.

Formal Customer complaint process with effective corrective and preventive action methods.

If you are doing all the above then you may be well on your way toward gaining ISO 9001 2000 registration. However, if your Quality Management System is incomplete or immature it will require much more effort to become compliant. You can continue to adjust your system, audit for compliance, train employees etc. until you reach a position where you feel you have done as much as you are able to do yourself.

If however, you have reached this stage and are concerned if you have missed something important you can hire a consultant to carry out a [Pre-Assessment]. A pre-assessment is a gap-analysis survey carried out by a professional who compares what processes your organisation has in place compared to those required by the ISO 9001 2000 Quality Management Standard.

The consultant will report any deficiencies in your organisations processes, it is then up to you to decide if you want to tackle these deficiencies by yourself or to engage the professional services of the consultant.

Driso provide ISO 9001 2000 consultancy, auditing, software, and training Services. They also supply Easy ISO 9001 2000® software for initially setting up an ISO 9001 2000 compliant Quality Management System or improving upon an existing one.

To contact Driso Consultancy Services visit the web site below and see what they can do for you and your business. Contact: http://www.driso.co.uk for more details.