If you get nothing for nothing, then quality doesn't come cheap, free or easy. Quality is about hard work and many companies in Ireland are choosing to adhere to international standards to add this essential extra essence to the mixed bag that results in their success.
One of the standards they are choosing is ISO 9000, which is the world's leading standards series for Quality Management Systems and was revised by ISO member bodies in December 2000. The new series of revised standards, embraces previous standards ISO 9000, ISO 9001 and ISO 9004, and has an emphasis on making the standards more streamlined and user friendly for business. The National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) has been to the forefront of introducing the whole concept of a quality management systems approach and is responsible for registering companies with ISO 9000:2000 in the Republic.
In 1987 ISO 9000 was introduced in its earlier form and has gone through a number or revisions. "Effectively the purpose of that is to ensure that the requirements of the standard remain relevan to growing business expectation," explains NSAI board member Mr Vincent Delaney. In 1987 the standard was very much driven around the quality assurance model. 1994 saw a further revision to the ISO 9000 series of standards. "It started to put more emphasis on the process of continual improvement and on effectiveness and evaluation of effectiveness," says Mr Delaney.
Last year there was a further revision to the standard, emphasising the whole process of continual improvement and emphasising things like leadership. "It identified eight quality management principles that can be used by top management in order to lead the organisation toward improved performance. There's a further emphasis put on the whole process of improved performance."
Quality management principles are a comprehensive and fundamental rule or belief for leading and operating an organisation aimed at continually improving performance over the long term. The principles embrace things like customer focus which, he says, is fundamental to a management system. Leadership and the whole concept of communication and the involvement of people are also quite important.
ISO 9000 talks about a systems approach, a factual approach to decision-making and it talks about mutually beneficial supplier relationships. According to Mr Delaney: "It is kind of talking about an interactive process between customer and client from a systems approach, so that the whole concept of continual improvement is embraced."
The number of companies embracing ISO 9000 is continuing to increase. There are in excess of 2000 in Ireland and globally there are 230,000. "The uptake in Ireland has been quite impressive when you compare it to other European countries. In general industry has embraced the whole concept and the culture of a management systems approach."
The uptake of environmental management systems standard ISO 14001 has been comparable with other European companies. More than 350,000 companies in 150 countries worldwide are certified to ISO 9000 and other quality management systems.
Mr Delaney likens it to an international language because the requirements are so clearly defined and understood. It doesn't know any boundaries because the same system and its interpretation and the control on interpretation are achieved through accreditation. Accreditation bodies like the NSAI, he says, effectively have to have a "driving licence". This driving licence is accreditation. "The objective of accreditation is to ensure interpretation across sector, across country is standardised."
ISO 9000 is not without its critics. In the past it had been viewed by many as being too bureaucratic and geared towards producing vast amounts of paperwork and relevant only to manufacturing.
ISO 9000: 2000 is more flexible and more relevant across all industry sectors, as opposed to manufacturing, which the original standard was applied to. The new standard makes it easier for the services sector and the public sector. The requirements are more easily understood and this makes it easier to apply and therefore the benefits are good. "One of the important things about any international system is that the benefits are clearly understood, they can see the justification for implementation," says Mr Delaney. One component is to implement it, another is to develop it and maintain it and that's where the continuing added value comes from, he says.
Whereas in the past it did not focus on customer expectation and satisfaction, the new standard does. The number of standards in the series has also been reduced from 27 to four.
ISO 9000 is not just about getting a piece of paper for companies, they actually want to maintain it and ensure that it is enhancing their business. "Most organisations go to a lot of effort and apply a lot of resource to put in a management system. There is a great genuineness about it. They obviously do it to ensure that they get some benefit or some added value out of it," he says.
To be certified with ISO 9000, the adequacy of the system a company has put in place is evaluated and the documentation examined.
"Registration is maintained by ongoing surveillance audits, depending on the size of the company it could be two visits a year or three visits a year. The purpose of that is to, in a constructive and a pro-active way with the organisation, to ensure that the system continues to remain relevant and capable of meeting and anticipating customer needs and expectation," says Mr Delaney.
In a nutshell the ISO 9000:2000 series is restructured on a business process model, which more closely corresponds to the way organisations actually operate and should result in quality management systems that are more effective, easier to implement and audit.
