Meaning of ISO 9001 Rating?

[Texas Star]

We all have our opinion of Taurus guns, some not too enthusiastic.

I've read that the company has an ISO 9001 (?) rating, which supposedly means that they have high manufacturing standards that should give a buyer confidence.

Do any of you with backgrounds in industry know what this rating actually means, in layman's terms? Is it largely symbolic, or does it infer really substantial standards?

Just wondering.

Thanks.

 

[jaykellogg]

When I worked for GE Appliance Control in Carroll, IA we became ISO 9001 compliant. This rating means you have high quality standards and that you adhere to them. This does not necessarily mean the customers are happy with the product, it just means that standards are in place to reduce the variation between products.

 

[Texas Star]

When I worked for GE Appliance Control in Carroll, IA we became ISO 9001 compliant. This rating means you have high quality standards and that you adhere to them. This does not necessarily mean the customers are happy with the product, it just means that standards are in place to reduce the variation between products.

Yeah, but who enforces it? Who awards it?

 

[jaykellogg]

If I remember correctly, we (GE) selected Underwriter's Laboratories to do our certification. You have to be recertified periodically which involves an extensive audit.

 

[Dennis The B]

The International Standards Organization awards the certification. They also set information technology and photographic film standards, among others.

 

[Gischileu]

Here, this article might help - or put you to sleep.

ISO 9000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[M29since14]

It's definitely put-you-to-sleep material. The standard covers certain aspects of doing business which must be addressed. How you address them can be a function of the level of detail and sophistication of your own organization - and what the agency that actually certifies you (the "registrar") will put up with.

The standard does not concern itself with "high manufacturing standards" per se, at least as most people think of that. In other words, it is not there to specify design, materials, tolerances, etc. It is interested in seeing that you conduct your business in a certain, uniform way and that you are doing what you say you are doing in your quality system and procedures.

There are those who feel the "ISO-certification racket" is a nice little scheme that has made a lot of people a pretty chunk of change and not really added a lot of value to the product, but everyone's opinion on this varies to one degree or another and, like everything in life, the standard was never designed to be a cure-all. It has good points and bad points. Most companies tend to believe the good (increased sales possibilities) outweigh the bad (non-productive expense).

 

[bluegrassarms]

You want my honest opinion?

It's a set of standards on how a company should be run written by a bunch of bureaucrats who have never run a company but think filling out a bunch of forms and writing down a bunch of buzz words somehow assures you are doing a good job at it. I told that to the guy in charge of ISO certification for a company once who was blathering about how great he was. If looks could kill.

ISO is a Switzerland based non-governmental organization, NGO, made up of "members" which are in fact just other standards bodies within 150+ nations. The US member is ANSI. All these members vote and run the place, which is great if we're designing file formats and such and publishing them as "standards" so people can be compatible.

Where it fails is when they publish standards for something as intangible and subjective as best business practices. As a guideline ISO 9001 is fine, but so are any number of basic outlines published by myriad academics.

where it hits the fan is if you are committed to quality or not, and no amount of paperwork and certification and words can make it so.

It ends up being like a college degree. There are brilliant lawyers and horrid lawyers both with the same degree from the same school hanging on their wall. All it proves is they did the work to get the paper, it tells you nothing about how much they really understood it and how they can apply it in practice to help you. Likewise ISO 9001 can tell you they filled out the paperwork and paid the fees and got the certification, but it can't really tell you if they company is well run and managed and committed to quality any more than a law degree tells you a person is a great or bad lawyer.

Like school, you can go through the process and get a lot out of it or come out with the same degree having skated by and learned nothing. No amount of paperwork will stop bad management decisions or make people care about quality who don't in their souls worry about quality.

It's an admirable goal, but in the end Taurus will either turn out quality guns or they won't, and the market will make that determination, not a group of people who by and large have never turned a lathe or fired a gun.

Having or not having ISO "certification" IMO tells you nothing about the company of use when making a purchase decision. It tells me they are probably contracting with someone who requires it, which is the "racket" part referred to in M29's excellent post.

 

[WPWarhawk]

It's a quality standard, I deal with AS9100, the Aerospace version every day.

A certification means that you can produce a product the same way, time after time, but that product doesn't necessarily have to work.

The joke is that you could build cement life jackets that would meet the ISO requirements.

 

[venomballistics]

Yeah, but who enforces it? Who awards it?

it almost don't matter.
if the product is a poor design in terms of engineering ISO 9001 means you won't get lucky and find a specimen whose run out stacks in your favor

 

[johngalt]

In a nutshell, it is just a certification that you have documented procedures and actually follow them. It makes no judgement on the quality of the procedures, product design, manufacturing techniques, or anything else. The individual company generates the procedures, they are then certified that the procedures are followed. The company must have documentation proving that they followed procedure.

Personally, I am a skeptic. As bluegrassarms said, you end up with a bureaucrats who have no responsibility to produce anything dictating to those who do. You end up in perpetual "cover your rear" mode - providing evidence that procedures were followed becomes more important than actually designing and producing the product.

I think they way it got started was this group went to customers (government at first) and told them "You aren't getting a quality product unless your vendors are certified to this standard".

Then they went to the vendors and said "You won't win contracts unless you are certified to this standard".

Sort of like an arms dealer instigating a war and then selling weapons to both sides.

 

[finesse_r]

It means that either:
1. Your product is either consistently good,
2. Your product is either consistently average, or
3. Your product is either consistently bad.

It basically means you shoot a very tight pattern that may or may not actually hit the target.

 

[walkin jack]

I was a Process operator for a MAJOR oil/chemial plant. We went through the certification and it was the general consensus that another name for it might me the country version of the term cow manure.

All the significance of the commotion, hassle, extra work and babysitting of shoe-clerks in our manufacturing spaces who had NO CLUE (no offense to any shoe sales folks in here )never made it down to the sweaty masses down in the trenches where I worked.

As far as I know the company didn't sell an extra dollars worth of product for all the nonsense. This whole thing was customer driven. They more or less demanded we go through it in the interest of our continued business relationship.

But my employer took it very seriously. We were all invited to be on our best behavior and kiss up to those twerps as much as we could. The entire thing is a perfect example of how one or a very few big shots can put massive amounts of people through the hoop for no purpose other than to swell up and exercise their power.

If you can't tell I'm holding back. I don't dare say how I REALLY feel about it..............

 

[steveno]

I worked at a company that was ISO-9001 certified. another one of the reasons was if you have manufacturing plants overseas it had to be ISO-9001 certified as well to be able sell your product in Europe.

 

[FishingPilot]

ISO certifications rarely look at the finished product. It's all about processes. Are your suppliers ISO certified? do you quality check you raw materials? Do you quality check after each manufacturing step? Is it documented somewhere? Can i trace this particular end product to the person who tested in at the factory? during the machining process? when the raw materials were delivered? it's all about processes which should lead to a quality product.

 

[Dominus_Lex]

Most suppliers to the auto industry are ISO or QS certified, if for no other reason the Detroit three said failure to be so by 2000 would be cause for removal from bid lists. My employer at the time spent about $400,000 to hit that mark (in addition to the 80 or 90k a year to keep it). All was well for a short time until the powers that be in Detroit, discovered there where good number of non QS/ISO business' out there with a built in cost savings..... They did not pay to become or stay QS/ISO certified.

 

[bagga]

In a nutshell, it is just a certification that you have documented procedures and actually follow them. It makes no judgement on the quality of the procedures, product design, manufacturing techniques, or anything else. The individual company generates the procedures, they are then certified that the procedures are followed. The company must have documentation proving that they followed procedure.

Personally, I am a skeptic. As bluegrassarms said, you end up with a bureaucrats who have no responsibility to produce anything dictating to those who do. You end up in perpetual "cover your rear" mode - providing evidence that procedures were followed becomes more important than actually designing and producing the product.

I think they way it got started was this group went to customers (government at first) and told them "You aren't getting a quality product unless your vendors are certified to this standard".

Then they went to the vendors and said "You won't win contracts unless you are certified to this standard".

Sort of like an arms dealer instigating a war and then selling weapons to both sides.

the first paragraph is exactly what it is at the company i work for. procedures are documented with photographs and written explanations and are kept in a book for all to see.

 

[PA Guns & Ammo]

ISO 9001 is a lot like the BBB. It means nothing unless you want to have a chance in getting certain contracts. I have been through the ISO 9001 and the ISO 14001 and it is a joke.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Was the Yugo company ISO 9001 certified? I hope the manager took the certification home before the smart bombs started hitting.

 

[don5]

The Blue collar version is this- You make a product, any product, the same way EVERY time. It doesn't matter if the product is good or flawed as long as it is made the same way EVERY time. It is all about making a statement that says "we build our product the same whether it is serial number 1 or 1 million." CONSISTANCY is the key word for ISO. The previous poster was correct in that you have to have this certification to market your product overseas. This was explained to me when I had to go through the training.