ISO 9000 is a quality management system standard. It helps you define in some form of documentation how the business is operated. The end result should be a business that runs itself - well.
It is an ideal solution for small business owners wishing to create a well oiled machine that runs itself. It is also a really useful independent assessment that a business buyer will be able to pick up the business and run with it easily.
There are two broad approaches which you need to be aware of when seeking advice on this:
1 - pre-packaged fast track to get the certificate with minimal effort in the shortest possible time
2 - longer, internally driven approach that has continuous improvement at its core
While approach 1 may be both cheaper and faster at the outset, be aware that you will also end up adopting practices to do this that will be pure overhead and make no sense in terms of how the businesses is run. You should also be aware that certification authorities do not like these approaches which may cause you problems in an assessment or at a later re-assessment.
Approach 2 seems the tougher route, but the end result will be a system that all staff can buy into and will push the business forward. You will find that, even though you will incur some documentation overhead, the continuous improvement approach will save you time and money elsewhere. The whole idea of this approach is to make the business better and the certificate then becomes an added bonus.
If you have never worked with ISO9000 before you will need to take external advice. This is because the standard leaves ample room for interpretation in the context of the business using it. You will need to know what is and what is not acceptable. This advice will often (as a by-product) provide clues as to how to make your business better.
A good example is documentation. An automated system can be regarded as documentation. If automatically there is only one way to do something, there is no need to have a detailed document explaining how something is done.
Sometimes having a critical, knowledgeable pair of eyes on your operations can provide an insight on improvement you have missed. Often these insight are simple and obvious once you know them.
The key thing to remember when taking advice is that it is just that - advice. Exactly how much of the advice you choose to take is entirely down to you.
For businesses above a certain size, an ISO 9000 certificate is an independent assessment of how well the business is organised and how well it can manage without the intervention of the general manager or owner.
To get the certification requires quite a bit of documentation and some internal structures to make sure documentation is followed and is updated in line with how the business operates.
What the certificate tries to prove is consistent quality. That no matter who is buying, or where, the quality of the product or service will be consistent and ideally consistently high.
You may or may not like McDonald's, but you know that, no matter which franchise you buy from, a Big Mac will be the same. This is because this business (like most franchises) has the concept of well documented, consistent quality fully built into the bones of its operations.
The thing to remember is that ISO 9000 is a standard that dictates in fairly broad terms the components of a well organised, consistent quality business. It does not tell you how to run the business.
For example there is a requirement to have documentation on how processes are operated within the business. These can be written procedures printed out in the form of a paper based manual, or they could be on an intranet, or enclosed in a specialised piece of control software, or something else.
You can decide the best approach that suits the business. All the ISO 9000 standard requires is that documentation is controlled and accessible to all who need it. An electronic approach will be no good on the shop floor if the production workers do not have access to it at the place in which they work.
Equally the level of training and sophistication of the workforce can often dictate the level of documentation. Highly educated professionals offering technical advisory services will generally have less specific documentation than low skilled production workers.
Calling on external advice for this can therefore often save a great deal of wasted effort documenting things that can be dealt with in another - saving both time and effort.
As the project progresses and the business becomes fully documented, it is also useful to bring in an adviser to carry out an audit. This will provide a good idea as to how an external examiner will view the business.
Be especially wary of seemingly simple questions where the answer is obvious to everyone in the business. These can be key weaknesses in the operations: "this is the way we have always done it" is not always the best way. An external adviser will ask 'stupid' questions and help you re-evaluate everything.
The bottom line of the ISO 9000 standard is continuous improvement. If done well, the bottom line of continuous improvement should be the bottom line of the profit and loss statement.
