Case against ISO

VGTU

Faculty of mechanics

Department of industrial enterprises management

Written by Benas Rimša PIVm-3

Vilnius 2003

The history of ISO 9000

In the early 1979, the British Standards Institute published a series of

standards, known as the BS 5750 series, for use by manufacturing companies.

This was based on the more military product-specific NATO manufacturing

standards, although substantially modified for application to Quality

Management systems. This standard was enforced through assessments and

audits.

In 1987, the British Standards Institute revised the standard to include

service-providers as well as manufacturing companies. Additional

requirements on internal verification by the company were added and the

standard was generally clarified and strengthened. In 1988, the BS5750

standard was adopted by ISO without changes and was published

internationally under the ISO 9000 name.

ISO standards are recognized worldwide. In Lithuania, as in many other

countries, a lot of companies seeks recognition according ISO standards

only for prestigious reasons – leaving quality management system control in

the second place. Ironical, but this is what exactly should ISO do – manage

company’s quality system, so iit is a big doubt whether these standards

helps in reaching this aim.

There are ten arguments in the case against ISO 9000: 

1. ISO 9000 encourages organisations to act in ways which make things worse

for their customers

The requirements for documentation are aa major feature of the Standard;

they represent the Standard’s view of how one should go about checking

whether organisations do as they say they do. The means for improvement

usually lie elsewhere, but the documented system becomes the means for

organisational control. Inspection means independent control of work, the

‘philosophy’ of the standard is grounded in ‘quality by inspection’, but: 

2. Quality by inspection is not quality

Inspection increases errors, adds to costs and decreases morale:

In such circumstances one often finds that the ‘inspecting’ person does not

inspect everything, assuming that the ‘worker’ will have taken

responsibility. Both parties are caught up in the psychology of inspection

– each prone to assuming that the other will be responsible. It is a recipe

for increasing errors. Inspection of any kind always increases errors.

Quality should be designed in.

Rooted in the philosophy of quality by inspection, it encourages managers

to control their organisations in ways that actually undermine performance

and, paradoxically, damage quality. These methods of control are the reason

behind people’s dissatisfaction; they are methods of control which

demoralise people. 

3. ISO 9000 starts from the flawed presumption that work is best controlled

by specifying and controlling procedures.

This is why you find over-elaborate documentation, people having to do ‘two

jobs’ – do the work then ‘write’ about it. There is an abundance of

documentation that only exists so that an external assessor can do his or

her job. These methods are preventing people making a useful contribution,

making them feel that the value of their contribution is, in whatever way,

defined by procedures. Despite what many managers have been led to believe,

to control performance by controlling people’s activity is a poor way to

manage. It is usually a fast way to sub-optimisation – it makes performance

worse.

That organisations inflict such pain and suffering on themselves is itself

a phenomenon important to understand. It is inevitable when the principal

reason for registration is coercion. Managers are fearful about what could

happen if they are not registered. The focus of management activity becomes

‘get registered to ISO 9000’. It is vital to them to avoid the consequences

they fear for not having it. Management, when focused in this way, does not

learn.

4. The typical method of implementation is bound to cause sub-optimisation

of performance

It does not start with performance, it starts with a view of the

organisation compared to a set of requirements. It is of course assumed

that the requirements will, when properly interpreted, have a beneficial

impact on performance.

The focus of implementation is to create documentation that enables

monitoring of the defined procedures. It is no ssurprise that organisations

get into the position where they ignore the documented procedures until

just prior to assessment – when there is an unholy rush to ensure

everything is in order for the assessors. And the assessment is often a

torturous experience. People do not like to be ‘caught out’ or controlled;

they like to be in control. To be told that a third party is the judge of

one’s performance is positively de-motivational.

5. The Standard relies too much on people’s and, in particular, assessors’

interpretations of quality

The defenders of ISO 9000 acknowledge that it suffers from ‘problems of

interpretation’ in the hands of those who ’know no better’. This argument

always points the finger at others – and if this were the only criticism of

ISO 9000 it would surely be enough to put a brake on the Standard’s

promulgation.

Quality (following Deming) teaches that you should manage what could go

wrong from a position of knowledge, not one of supposition. It teaches that

people need to be in control for learning, improvement and innovation to

occur; that customers should be treated how they want to be treated – after

all, the purpose of any organisation is to win and keep customers. However,

this is not what is taught by ISO 9000 and its entourage.

6. The sstandard promotes, encourages and explicitly demands actions which

cause sub-optimisation

Dictating how customers should be treated and over-bureaucratic

documentation are two ubiquitous examples. The requirements for control and

inspection are more pernicious forms of sub-optimisation. The consequential

de-motivation is, in large part, a natural response to being controlled.

And ISO 9000 starts, a priori, from an attitude of control.

The need for control explains the genesis of what has become the ISO 9000

movement. In the Second World War, if you wanted to supply the British

Ministry of Defence with munitions, you had to register to a standard on

which, ultimately, ISO 9000 was based. The intent was to prevent accidents

in the factories and it solved an immediate problem – bombs were prevented

from going off in factories. The approach was to document procedures for

production and ensure that they were followed through inspection. This is a

way of working which ensures that production meets specifications. It is a

method of control that ensures consistency of output. It solved a problem

of the time.

7. When people are subjected to external controls, they will be inclined to

pay attention only to those things which are affected by the controls

The main practical advantage of registration to ISO 9000 is that it enables

organisations to tender for business they might

otherwise not get. This is

the reason managers are prepared to pay for ‘ready-made’ manuals and obtain

fraudulent assessments. It is a natural response to coercion, people

‘cheat’ – they do what they need to do to get by, to avoid the feared

consequences of (in this case) not being registered.

It is not people – workers or managers – that we should be controlling.

Quality teaches us that continuous improvement relies on controlling work

using methods of control different from those with which most managers are

traditionally ffamiliar. At the time that out munitions factories were

controlling output through ensuring that people worked to procedures, some

American munitions factories were improving output by reducing variation.

8. ISO 9000 has discouraged managers from learning about the theory of

variation

Managers are easily persuaded of the benefits of having everybody working

to procedures. It appears logical and common sense to think that people

will do better if they are clear about what they have to do, and work is

orderly. But when this is true and when iis it not true? ISO 9000 does not

help us understand the answer because it assumes that it is always true. It

starts from the presumption that it is of value to work to procedures;

procedures that are documented showing how work is ddone and inspected. ISO

9000 also provides the rules for inspection by others to make sure that

‘people are doing as they should’.

9. ISO 9000 has failed to foster good customer-supplier relations:

ISO 9000 reinforces an ‘arm’s-length’ view of management which, in turn,

has maintained top management’s ignorance about what ISO registration is

doing to their operations in day-to-day practical terms. Without such first-

hand knowledge, managers are unlikely to question either ISO 9000’s or

their own assumptions about how to manage. And this is the final argument

in the case against ISO 9000:

10. As an intervention, ISO 9000 has not encouraged managers to think

differently

ISO 9000 represents further reinforcement of the idea that work is divided

into management and worker roles. It was the fundamental mistake of

twentieth-century management, for IISO 9000 continues the tradition that

‘managers decide’ and ‘workers do’. This tradition has led to means of

control – through adherence to procedures, budgets, targets and standards –

all of which cause sub-optimisation. It is a way of thinking about

management that began in mass-production systems and, throughout most of

this century, has been the starting point for defining the purpose of

management.

This ‘command and control’ thinking. Changing our thinking about management

is the key to performance improvement. ISO 9000 does no more than encourage

managers to ffollow a recipe that, because of its antecedents, reinforces

the wrong thinking. The better way starts with understanding the

organisation as a system. It implies a completely different management

philosophy.

Analyzing these arguments you can come up with the various conclusions, but

perhaps ISO in business is just like democracy in politics – if you know

something better possible to introduce for human kind, please tell it.

Used sources:

1. Magazine “Nauja statyba” 2002 april.

2. John Seddon “The case against ISO 9000”

3. http://www.iso-9000.co.uk/1/00.html

4. http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/socsja/Organizations/Org00-

0/stamatisR.html