As a public service, we are going to talk about the ISO9001 Fast Track Failure Modes.
I’ve decided to write some more about this because it is important. “ISO9001 Fast Track” is where you go out and buy/borrow/download some quality system documentation. You then “adopt it.” Then give the registrar a call, tell them you have a system and would they please come and audit you. The underlying rationale is “we are in a big hurry to get the piece of paper.”
ISO9001 Fast Track Failure Mode: Stressing the weak link
Is there anything really wrong with this? The answer is, unfortunately, not really. Most of the time this is actually successful. The client gets his or her registration, can bid on his or her business and is temporarily happy.
But, the number one problem is that by adopting an externally derived system they aren’t actually improving the business. In fact, in a lot of cases, they’re making it more chaotic by putting more stress on the weak link. This is the front line supervision, who have to be more careful in making process changes, and maintaining records.
So what invariably happens is that they make a huge management effort to implement the system. This may or may not include stressing out the poor admin. The minute the auditor walks out the door there is a giant sigh of relief. Then everyone goes back to their old habits until a month before the audit the following year.
A Certain Kind of Company does the Fast Track
The ISO9001 Standard has been around for about 30 years now. It was first adopted in the 1987 time frame. Since that time, it has become the most widely adopted Quality Management System standard. There are over 1 million ISO9001 certificates issued globally.
So, by this time, most responsible business operators are aware of the system. There are different degrees of understanding it, however.
So in a high percentage of the cases, clients that are on the “fast track” are doing so for a reason. Because of McCaig’s Law, which is “nothing happens in isolation”, chances are excellent that if a company made the snap decision to get their registration, they tend to make snap decisions elsewhere in the business as well.
The irony is, of course, that snap decisions are what the ISO9001 standard is trying to weed out of the business. Proper implementation of the ISO standard requires “process based thinking”. At the start of every system there is a planning step. A company that is in a hurry to get their ISO registration on the “fast track” is already not big on planning.
“The Organization Shall Determine”
This is the key phrase 19 times in the 2015 standard. What it defines is the “planning step” of the Plan Do Check Act cycle.
Here is an example:
The organization shall…determine the necessary competence of person(s) doing work under its control that affects the performance and effectiveness of the quality management system;
This requirement is nothing less than asking the simple question,. “What does it mean for someone to be “trained” around here?” I actually ask that question in that way during an audit. The “ideal answer” is something like this: “We have a series of training modules, that have in it safety, customers, and actual job functions. We make sure people understand it before they start work. We give them refresher training every year, and every time the job requirements change.”
The “actual answer” is usually something like this. ‘Oh, that guy has been around a few weeks and we pretty much threw him or her to the lions. If they pass their probation period we figure they know enough about the job.”
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with that approach. In some fraction of the cases, it is a way to get a body into a job. It is no way to run an empire, though. Lack of adequate understanding and training turns out to be a very popular answer when there is a customer-related screwup and you have to issue a corrective action.
It is also a major reason that your lunch is late.
Lack of the “Planning Step.”
So what is the failure? Well, lack of training of course. But the real failure is lack of the “planning step.”
No one goes through the process of defining what it means to be “trained.”
But it is not just about training. The other 18 cases of “the organization shall determine” are about other self-determined requirements. These include what it takes to to be a supplier, and the requirements for the products. Also, what needs to be monitored and measured, and at the end of the day, what improvements need to be made in the system.
So, the number two failure mode in the “ISO9001 Fast Track” scenario is this. The businesses that do it tend to be poor planners.
“Rescue Dog” Quality Systems
This is where you adopt the quality system from someplace else. The scenario goes something like this:
“Boss, I worked for an ISO certified company in my previous job. All we need to do is adopt their ISO manual, which I happened to have on a flash drive when I left.”
The boss says “Great. We can do that and save ourselves all of that time.”
This works fine for the Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits, but not all that well for the long term. This is because the “rescue dog” ISO system has in it a lot of not widely known requirements. These might have been fine for the previous company, but not fine for a different company.
Here is an example: “Suppliers will be evaluated quarterly.”
So the auditor comes in, the suppliers may or may not have been evaluated before the Stage 2 audit. A year goes by, it’s the first surveillance audit, and there is no objective evidence of a supplier evaluation. What’s the story? The story is, the suppliers at this place didn’t need to be evaluated quarterly or even annually. So, the purchasing manager didn’t do it.
Importing Unnecessary Requirements
You get resistance from the purchasing manager. “Wait a minute, I have 300 suppliers. You’re telling me I need to fill out a supplier evaluation form for all 300 of these? Since when?
So when a quality system is imported from someplace else, you may very well be importing a lot of requirements that you don’t need.
The more thoughtful approach would be, before the system is adopted, interview the purchasing person. Ask the simple questions “what does it take to become a supplier here” and “what does it take to get fired as a supplier here” and see what you get.
A lot of times, the answer will be “I dunno, I don’t give it that much thought” and if that is the case it is a lack of planning.
The above scenario by the way is the underlying business reason that a well thought out system of supplier approval is important.
The bigger issue here is: If one of the “ISO9001 Fast Track” failure modes is lack of planning, it does no good for someone else to do your planning.
IS09001 Fast Track Failure Mode #3, Not “Sharing the love.”
You do know that my number one rule of ISO is “Share the Love.”
Importing a quality system into a place without involving the process owners is an imposition. You are importing a set of requirements that on their face may not even be necessary.
This is even worse in cases where there is an “organizational champion” that is someone besides the boss. Invariably this is some very conscientious administrative type and quite often they have no real power in the organization.
The “organizational champion” is the convenient ISO Sherpa that maintains the system and does the grunt work.
Negative Emotions
The problem is, of course, that the “organizational champion” becomes the personal embodiment of having the middle layer of management do more work.
In the most severe cases, the negative emotions are projected on “organizational champion” and he or she becomes the embodiment of the system.
If the company is small enough, and if the Organizational Champion is high enough up in the company, it is not a problem. But, this is a rarity.
More often the process owners tend to not take ownership of the requirements of their own system.
This of course gets them into all sorts of problems with unintended requirements.
The Real “ISO9001 Fast Track Failure Mode.”
Here is the irony, and this is coming from someone who has done this about 40 times. Invariably, when a company adopts an ISO system on the “fast track” to get a piece of business, they don’t get the business. Why is this? Not always, of course but often, a company that doesn’t do an especially good job of planning, and doesn’t have clearly defined processes has other issues.
One of the big ones is “they don’t know what anything costs,” namely their internal reporting and data gathering systems are also weak. What this means is that they can’t intelligently bid and/or solicit business from a pricing standpoint. They bid projects too high, or even worse, they bid projects too low and get them, and end up losing money.
I would say in greater than 50 percent of the cases, the companies that need the “ISO9001 Fast Track” are the same ones that are not in touch with their business in the first place.
The Bottom Line
Not that it is going to stop anybody, but the ISO9001 Fast Track comes with it some built in weaknesses.
Not the least of which is, that too often, these “fast track” companies are doing so just to get the piece of paper. What that says is that there are a lot of other underlying issues with the company that no one is thinking or talking about.
The ISO9001 Standard, as a method of understanding and improving the business should be at the very least profit neutral if properly implemented.
If improperly implemented, it could be an indefinite burden and source of stress on the company who starts to dread their annual audit. The main ISO9001 Fast Track Failure Mode is that you adopt a system that doesn’t benefit the business.
I know the above seem a little harsh, but I am writing this as a public service. To avoid the ISO9001 Fast Track Failure Modes, you have some obligation to understand what could go wrong.
Please feel free to correct any of this if I am wrong.
