Criticisms of ISO 9000

Criticisms

* The compliance process is costly and time-consuming.

* Lots of administration is needed to implement it.

* Adhering to ISO 9000 makes processes more consistent; to some proponents of continuous improvement, it also makes it harder to improve and readapt the processes.

* "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." It has been argued that it may not be appropriate to apply a process such as ISO 9000 to a field requiring creativity, such as software engineering, which is more analogous to designing factories than to operating a factory.

* Bad managers still manage at arm's length, using paper reports rather than knowing what is happening on the factory floor. ISO 9000 can reinforce this behaviour. Instead of being seen as an opportunity to improve things, audits often become quite confrontational in structure.

* Many companies only register to ISO 9000 because they are forced to by the marketplace, whether or not ISO 9000 is in fact appropriate to their business.

* ISO 9001:2000 does not give too much practical advice, but instead focuses on general principles. In order to create a standard applicable to almost any kind of organization, specific requirements and tools were avoided whenever possible. This is one of the reasons for the proliferation of industry-specific standards which are more practical and give clear guidance about what quality tools have to be used when.

* It can be easier to produce the necessary documents than it is to improve the business processes themselves.

There are few objective metrics showing any effectiveness for ISO 9001. In 1997, two people took the BSI to the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming in an advertisement that ISO 9001 "improves productivity ... almost always gives an immediate result in terms of productivity and efficiency, and that means cost reductions ... pays for itself ... Staff morale is better because they understand what is expected of them and each other," whilst being unable to produce any objective metrics to substantiate these assertions. The complaint was upheld.

Quality programmes are notoriously difficult to quantify as Crosby warned in Quality is Free back in 1979, long before the first of these standards emerged. When an organization is measuring nothing, the only "quality costs" it knows are the basics of scrap and rework, and often even these are not being tracked effectively. Once a formal system is introduced, much more accurate data starts to emerge and initial costs of quality often appear to increase.

Toyota abandoned the standard in 2000, moving back to their in-house Toyota Production System.

One of the most concise and well-regarded statements of how to achieve quality is Deming's 14 points. A comparison of the principles of even ISO 9001:2000 against the 14 points still shows a considerable mismatch.

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