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ISO 9001:2008 Who has obtained this certification form the begining themselves

vettedude

Stainless
Joined
Nov 25, 2009
Location
Texas
I am looking for some guidance on this, I have read the standard, and want to know a good source (Book or write up) on the procedure for obtaining the certification. Any advice other than don't do it is appreciated, I work for a small manufacturing /engineering company.
 
I am looking for some guidance on this, I have read the standard, and want to know a good source (Book or write up) on the procedure for obtaining the certification. Any advice other than don't do it is appreciated, I work for a small manufacturing /engineering company.

I doubt very much if anyone can really give you helpful advice as you are small and don't even mention what you make or why you want to consider getting certified.

Do you have quality problems and in fact any written procedures or instructions for what you do?

Gordon
 
Gordon, go fly a kite!!! The man is asking for assistance here, not to be %^&# before he gets an answer.

You don't have to be a manufacture to be ISO certified, anyone can get it. Plan on spending a minimum of $10K with the certifying authorties to get there, at least that much. Your best bet is to get with one of the many certifying authorties like DNV and let them tell you what is involved. It's a big paperwork trail and its all about documentation and more documentation. There's a very good chance that you may already be doing this. It also involves enviromental stuff, too.
 
Gordon


It is ISO it does not make much of a difference what I make, if it is salad or space shuttle parts ISO should nto care. YES I need it or I would not be asking. No, we do nto have quality problems, we have three engineers that run our company, Engineering Manufacturing and Sales, we do it all we are pretty sharp on things and have documentation on procedures, but sometimes we deviate in the moment. I don't want the bull crap of having to follow a procedure exactly. We want innovation and improvement not stagnation and cogs in a wheel.

And get this, we are getting it because customers require it... My personal position on ISO is it is bullshit, I ran across 20+ countries in the middle east with ISO certs, who could not produce quality. Quality is way beyond writing crap down. Anything can be pencil whipped.
 
Gordon, go fly a kite!!! The man is asking for assistance here, not to be %^&# before he gets an answer.

You don't have to be a manufacture to be ISO certified, anyone can get it. Plan on spending a minimum of $10K with the certifying authorties to get there, at least that much. Your best bet is to get with one of the many certifying authorties like DNV and let them tell you what is involved. It's a big paperwork trail and its all about documentation and more documentation. There's a very good chance that you may already be doing this. It also involves enviromental stuff, too.

I am more interested in a book than anything else with some examples. I really want to know how vague I can be and still get the cert. I am confident in our organizations ability to control our process and continuously improve, but I am not 100% confident in the ISO way.
 
My personal position on ISO is it is bullshit, I ran across 20+ countries in the middle east with ISO certs, who could not produce quality. Quality is way beyond writing crap down. Anything can be pencil whipped.

You got that right!! I've heard so many stories about the stupidities of ISO.
 
vettedude,

here is a book that may be of help to you.

ISO 9001:2000 For Small Businesses - Ray Tricker - Google Books

There is an organization called ASQC that is all about quality. Might help to beccome a member of this society. They offer lots of different training for virtully all types of quality from NDE inspection to being a level III quality manager. They also have a vast selection of books and stuff on quality including ISO9001-2000 and the others that ISO has. I've been out of it too long to remember things. I got all of my training back in the early 1990's when ISO was rearing its head.
Ken
 
Small sidenote/question:

Didn't all that ISO business start out with the number 1000 or 2000? Seems like back when I worked in a big sheetmetal shop that they started crowing about being ISO certified, but I'm sure the number wasn't 9001. That was back about 1990 or 91 it seems like. I figure they keep moving the goalpost so whatever you did last year isn't good enough anymore.
 
It is good and bad it generates business you otherwise wouldn't have a shot at on the other hand it has become a crutch for a whole bunch of dumbasses and get bys who otherwise wouldn't be able to hold a job
 
I am more interested in a book than anything else with some examples. I really want to know how vague I can be and still get the cert. I am confident in our organizations ability to control our process and continuously improve, but I am not 100% confident in the ISO way.

I don't have advice for a book. But do have a real world example of the level of being vague on ISO implementation from my last employer.

The tool room that I worked in was strictly support for a very large screw machine shop. To get away from applying any documentation requirements to an overburdened tool room, the ISO manual was written to state that the tools are inspected by a first article of the parts they cut. Engineering was responsible for the tool room having the latest print revision. And that was it!

Our main competitor followed suit soon after, and went completely over board with ISO in their tool room. Inspection reports for all cutting tools made. Machine maintenance intervals with logs, etc. And because they wrote it that way, that's what they had to do.

As it was explained to us before implementing, the just of it was, say what you do and do what you say. Of course it's a little more involved. Documentation, corrective action reports, etc. If you have to do it, simplify it as much as you can.
 
Gordon, go fly a kite!!! The man is asking for assistance here, not to be %^&# before he gets an answer.

You don't have to be a manufacture to be ISO certified, anyone can get it. Plan on spending a minimum of $10K with the certifying authorties to get there, at least that much. Your best bet is to get with one of the many certifying authorties like DNV and let them tell you what is involved. It's a big paperwork trail and its all about documentation and more documentation. There's a very good chance that you may already be doing this. It also involves enviromental stuff, too.

And your answer is the reason I wrote as I did :) If that's what you believe ISO 9001 certification is then you have never done it yourself for a company. That sounds to me like you've been "ordered" to do so buy a customer.

There's a huge difference between writing what's best for the company and writing what the customer demands. It gets even worse when several customers don't want the same thing.

Bottom line - you get certified because it'll be good for your company. Too many get it done just as a sales pitch.

Gordon
 
Gordon


It is ISO it does not make much of a difference what I make, if it is salad or space shuttle parts ISO should nto care. YES I need it or I would not be asking. No, we do nto have quality problems, we have three engineers that run our company, Engineering Manufacturing and Sales, we do it all we are pretty sharp on things and have documentation on procedures, but sometimes we deviate in the moment. I don't want the bull crap of having to follow a procedure exactly. We want innovation and improvement not stagnation and cogs in a wheel.

And get this, we are getting it because customers require it... My personal position on ISO is it is bullshit, I ran across 20+ countries in the middle east with ISO certs, who could not produce quality. Quality is way beyond writing crap down. Anything can be pencil whipped.

You're right. It does become BS if it's being forced down your throat because a company demands it. Just about everything you will write will be to live up to customer expectations and not what is necessarily best for your company.
I know many companies without ISO certification that sell products and services much better than their competitors who have ISO certification.

Large companies and corporations need rules and guidelines simply because of their size. Any small company needing or having ISO certification is IMO suspicious. It makes me think of the word HONEST in a used car dealer's signpost.
A company making things that could cause death or injury are already tied up to rules and regulations.

I'm NOT saying that ISO 9001 certification is bad - only when it is done for the wrong reasons it is.

I'm writing from 25 years of experience within the field including being speaker at several conferences.

Gordon
 
Small sidenote/question:

Didn't all that ISO business start out with the number 1000 or 2000? Seems like back when I worked in a big sheetmetal shop that they started crowing about being ISO certified, but I'm sure the number wasn't 9001. That was back about 1990 or 91 it seems like. I figure they keep moving the goalpost so whatever you did last year isn't good enough anymore.

Going back further most of it started as some form of Quality Assurance and within the military. AQAP (Allied Quality Assurance Procedures) among others. About 25 or more years ago just about every country had their own quality standard.

This might come as a surprise to many but the country that was closest to what today is ISO 9001 was the UK with the British Standard on quality requirments.

Not too long ago there were ISO 9001, 9002 and 9003 but now it's all in just the one i.e. ISO 9001.
Of course those that make money out of such things now have other factors in the equation not least of which is "environment".

Gordon

My dentist has an ISO 9001 certificate. Why? I haven't a clue and don't want to ask in case the answer freaks me out.
 
I tried to do it on my own for 3 years, got a template on CD, but never had enough time or energy to complete it. I finaly paid a consultant 10K to do it for me, based on OUR processes .It cost another $1800.00 every year to audit. It is simple enough that everybody understands it, and it more than doubled our business. It is the best money I ever spent, I never would have got it done myself. The concept is pretty simple : Say what you do, and show proof ( paperwork ) that you do it.
As far as resources go, there is a quality magazine out there that I subscribed to for a while, but any book I looked at made my head spin.If you have any young people there, try to get them involved, it seems like they grasp it a little better than us old farts that tend to fight it every step of the way.Is it a PITA ? Oh yeah....

Having ISO means we have a better class of customers, and we don't have to fight for scraps with all the other non-ISO shops . Does it improve quality ? When used correctly, it does. It has brought a lot of work our way, and this year we are adding ISO 13485 (medical), next year AS9100 ( aerospace ).
 
You don't need a book. Everything is online. I see you are in Texas. If you are in or near the Houston area contact WCS Quality Registrars. They made it as simple as possible and they guarantee no travel expenses. The smaller the company, the easier and less expensive it is to implement. The cost for certification and maintenance is irrelevant if you are serious about the future growth of your company. You can make your quality manual as bare bones as possible and have it grow as the company does.
With all that said, if you engineer / manufacture your own product, there is not much external benefit to being ISO.
 
You don't need a book. Everything is online. I see you are in Texas. If you are in or near the Houston area contact WCS Quality Registrars. They made it as simple as possible and they guarantee no travel expenses. The smaller the company, the easier and less expensive it is to implement. The cost for certification and maintenance is irrelevant if you are serious about the future growth of your company. You can make your quality manual as bare bones as possible and have it grow as the company does.
With all that said, if you engineer / manufacture your own product, there is not much external benefit to being ISO.

I am close to Houston (Bryan) so I will give them a call and talk to them.
 
Vettedude,

The first thing: Be careful of consultants. They can suck you dry and leave you hanging ultimately leaving you without a certification let alone an expensive one. Then you'll be entirely pissed off about certification. The most common way for this to go south is a consultant will soak you for building a manual, procedures, and work instructions. It can be done relatively simple and inexpensively so long as you dont mind putting in some time.

The first thing you will want to do is obtain certification quotes from various registrars. Best place to start is with who your suppliers and customers use. Ask for quotation on full audit cycle. (certification, plus two surv. audits.) Pricing is dependent on size and there is no fixed pricing. Your paying for travel and lodging so it is best to get someone local.

ISO9001:2008 can apply to an array of businesses. I know of a 2 person stain window manufacturer that is ISO certified.

Audit duration is based on business size. A business with 17 employees two shifts is approximately 1 day on site, .25 hrs off site.

So basically it goes like this.

Build your system (which isn't difficult for a functioning small business system), complete a doc review to ensure your system addresses all requirements, Do a complete round of internal audits, have your registrar come in and do stage one and then state two. After stage two, you are certified so long as you pass and then you maintain from there. Any nonconformances found along the way are OK in general (there are rules that can cause failure), but a few minors will not prevent you from obtaining certification.

Not that it means much, I've been in Quality since I was in high school and I see a lot of things I dislike and a lot of things I do like about ISO and also system structures and management approaces.

Remember, registrars work for you and they want your business. They cannot tell you how to run your business so long as you are compliant to ISO9001:2008 requirements.

I wouldn't mind talking to you and answering any questions you may have.

Good luck.

CB
 
I also failed to mention, the best resource for going through the process is the registar you select.

A good registar will explain the process and show you the path.
 








 
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