ISO 9001

[rbmgf7]

I'm applying to a company that saying it wants to get its ISO 9001 cert.

I began working for another company over 10 years ago that was in the middle of doing the same.

Can anyone attest that businesses with this certification actually provide better products? My first company basically said it was a "club" to get into since some customers just wanted to see that "badge" (basically a marketing tool).

 

[DanielG]

They don't necessarily make better products. There are bad ISO-certified companies and good non certified companies

 

[sfriedberg]

ISO9001 is not about better. It's about consistency, repeatability, and avoiding "Key employee got hit by a bus. Nobody knows how to make his parts". You can have a perfectly valid 9001 certification and pump out crap all week long. What you must do is document your procedures and demonstrate that your employees follow those procedures. If the procedure says cramming a dull drill bit into a manually punched center hole is OK, then your holes will be shit. But all OK if those are your organization's documented procedures.

I would not say ISO9001 (or 9002) certification is a club membership, but it is a checkbox item for a lot of buyers. If you don't have it, you won't get in the door. It's like a college degree in that way. It may or may not be relevant to your job performance, but without one you simply will be eliminated from competition at the first, purely bureacratic, mechanical hurdle for many positions. Buyers have many different motivations for making it a checkbox item. If may help them achieve their own certification for downstream processing. It may protect them against litigation or various other attacks having nothing to do with the actual products you sell them. It serves as a signal that your organization is, in fact, organized and serious about business. If they are naive, they may treat it as some kind of guarantee of quality, or at least consistency. But really serious buyers will go past the checkbox and do their own inspection of your documented procedures and evaluation of your employee training and execution of those procedures. It's been my experience these inspections are much more critical and intrusive than the inspections carried out by the certifying agencies.

 

[Bill D]

AFAIK it is easy to write very simplistic specs and meet them. As long as it fits between these two scratch marks on the floor within two inches it meets specs. Bolt holes burned with torch +- 1/2" diameter. etc
harbor fright calipers will be used as accuracy standards for measurements.
Bill D

 

[CarbideBob]

Old fan from the early days and before.
BUT the old saying is.... "One can make concrete life jackets and be ISO certified".

 

[Thunderjet]

But really serious buyers will go past the checkbox and do their own inspection of your documented procedures and evaluation of your employee training and execution of those procedures. It's been my experience these inspections are much more critical and intrusive than the inspections carried out by the certifying agencies.

What HE said^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ISO WILL be valuable for gaining new REALLY GOOD customers, if they can audit you and see that your employees take it seriously.

PITA? Yup.

Worth it? Almost certainly.

Full disclosure:
I am very happy that there are OTHER people that are charged with this effort.
I'm NOT the guy you want doing ANY paperwork and keeping it organized.

But, if you need a close tolerance stamping die designed and built.....I'm THAT guy.

 

[Martin P]

I'm applying to a company that saying it wants to get its ISO 9001 cert.


Can anyone attest that businesses with this certification actually provide better products?

If a company wants to be better, ISO9001 can help achieve that.
Unfortunately I had to work with (not "at") a top tier (top 5) US defense company for many years where AS9100 (ISO9001 for aviation) was just a fig leaf to fuck up with authority and get contracts. They were holding their lower level workers to certain requirements, but at higher levels every weasel move was OK. There were/are clearly fraudulent. The entire 9001 set-up is done in a way to make this possible and to further abuse. They basically pay their certifying agent once a year, who goes through the motions, and they are in the clear.
I could write a book or at least some very nice Defense News articles. Where is Lisa Burgress when I need her.
I also heard similar stories from other top tier defense companies. Read up details on the 737MAX and extrapolate.

 

[Rob L]

Before I set up my own shop I had some parts made by a local shop that is ISO9001:2000 certified and the quality (finishes, tolerances and number of parts out of tolerance) was worse than another local shop I was using at the time without certification and I have made more or less the same parts since myself to a far higher standard without certification or formal training.

The parts they made were at least consistently meh though.

 

[Rob L]

Before I set up my own shop I had some parts made by a local shop that is ISO9001:2000 certified and the quality (finishes, tolerances and number of parts out of tolerance) was worse than another local shop I was using at the time without certification and I have made more or less the same parts since myself to a far higher standard without certification or formal training.

The parts they made were at least consistently meh though, so they hit that mark.

 

[adamm]

The think that is often missed is that ISO 9001 is often called a "quality spec". It is not. It is the requirements for a "Quality Management System". Emphasis on the "Management".

It has nothing to do with holding extra tight tolerances, or extra smooth surface finishes, or nice edge breaks, etc. It has to do with reliably meeting the customer spec, regardless of how "high quality" an item made to those specs would be. If the customer spec is 'Hole 6" +/-1"', then a guy with an O/A torch cutting it free hand is probably good to go. It can be inspected with a tape measure. If the customer spec is 30' long rope, +/-1', then properly laid out and documented scratch lines on the floor may well be fine. If you're making Class X gauge pins, then digital slide calipers of any provenance aren't going to make the cut. Your measuring standards, equipment and processes are required to be able to reliabily identify the difference between conforming and non-conforming product.

Some of the things I've seen that ISO 9001 is trying to defend against:

1) You order some parts to Rev A of a drawing, and you receive conforming parts. There is a design defect found, so you revise the drawing and order Rev B. The parts arrive conforming to Rev B. 6 months later, you put in another order for Rev B parts, but someone at the vendor builds to Rev A, because the vendor can't keep their paperwork straight. They still have Rev A drawings floating around, and staff don't know where to go to ensure they have the correct rev.

2) The quality inspector on day shift inspects a batch of 6 parts and finds one of them defective at the end of the day. Night shift comes in and sees the parts are done, so the shipper packs them up and sends them to the customer. The vendor lacks a known way to mark and segregate non-compliant parts, so the shipper didn't know it was defective.

Any company of size that regularly ships correct part is going to have systems that are equivalent to what is in the ISO 9000 series. Can you ship quality parts without ISO 9000? Of course. Can you have ISO 9000 and ship junk? Of course. But you aren't going to have a large multi-shift operation regularly putting out the right product in tolerance without processes similar to what ISO 9000 requires in place. The least value of ISO 9000 is for the solo business operator that is part of every customer and vendor meeting, reads every customer and vendor email, does all the work, and can remember everything. The more people involved, the more formal the processes and communication need to be.