ISO 9001

[North]

Dear All,

We are about to start a training business with less than 5 employees. We were thinking to go for ISO 9001 however we have doubts about whether we will be able to go for it since we are subletting our premises with the non written consent of the landlord. That is ,the landlord is renting a property to a local business which premises are quite large and we are subletting to the current tenant with no written contract at the moment. Landlord is happy with it. Right now we are discussing all the possible alternatives but my question is : would not having a lease be a problem, to achieve ISO 9001 ?

Many thanks
North

 

[Mark T Jones]

Unless things have changed, ISO is all about process, not about premises

 

[The Byre]

I oversaw the documentation for 9001 in two languages for a large international about 25 years ago. They had to have it at the insistence of their largest customer and we got the gig. Well paid but a bureaucratic nightmare for our customer and not worth the candle IMO.

 

[WaveJumper]

Something we did in the past due to requirements by major funds not that difficult to achieve if you have all your systems in place and properly documented. However I would be more concerned about sorting out that lease and getting that subletting properly documented before any issues arise

 

[DontAsk]

You can get ISO 9001 for producing any old s***e, so long as you processes are documented.

 

[SillyBill]

We have 9001 (quality),14001 (environment), 22716 (cosmetics) potentially getting pushed into 45001 (H&S) now too. On top of a myriad of other product specific certification schemes. Total waste of time for a small business in my view. We have for our clients, nothing more. It basically involves having to show written evidence (nothing has changed since the 2015 update) all of the things you do anyway so you can "show" an auditor you have done those things. Perhaps of use to a big sprawling enterprise but when a small business is a few people who spend all day every day talking to each other, less so...A lot of time is spent recording mundane stuff that has no value to the business other than to provide a document to show an auditor what has been done. You are only held to your own process/standards ultimately but there are certain items any auditor will expect to see. Doing it that long we can do our audits with our eyes closed, tick the boxes and get the piece of paper for another year...You have to sort of play the game with the auditors with respect to their "ideas" which is invariably a surefire way to generate lots more paperwork for no value to the business.

 

[rpaps]

We are thinking about gaining iso also, We are a similar company to you (7). ISO will initially open a door for us to hopefully capitalize on allowing us to provide a product that our competitors cannot.
What i am hoping for as a by product is that the ISO process will lean us up a bit.
Does anyone have any experience of the process helping a company become more efficient?

 

[Mark T Jones]

We are thinking about gaining iso also, We are a similar company to you (7). ISO will initially open a door for us to hopefully capitalize on allowing us to provide a product that our competitors cannot.
What i am hoping for as a by product is that the ISO process will lean us up a bit.
Does anyone have any experience of the process helping a company become more efficient?

i got ISO some years ago

we were targeting public sector who seem to like that type of nonsense

it was pretty straight forward and in truth I did benefit from an outsider’s view and input to processes.

 

[rpaps]

I was going to go down this route by myself but the quote I got from an ISO consultant company seemed very reasonable considering they would be holding my hand through the process.
I am yet to discover any long term hidden contract at the moment.

I have effectively taken over a manufacturing and installation company over the last few years. We have purchased some up to date machinery which has now completely changed our output and work loads. It was a big step initially but has paid off very quickly

Due to the growth and current market areas that we are wishing to target we need to make some changes. One of our targets requires ISO 9001 before they will entertain us.
I have however inherited an archaic ordering process where paperwork is everywhere. It is very messy and not very clean or lean. What I would like to do is combine the ISO with a new clean processing structure and overhaul the companies paper work.

The business is built on old school tooling which is starting to wear out. Should we purchase new / replacement equipment and increase our capacity as a by product I fear that we would become a victim of our own success and clients and products would suffer. We are effectively on the next step of business growth but as this happens I would like more of a clearer structure as to whats going on. Any processes that we involve now must have a positive input. Only two weeks ago, we started to lightly introduce Kaizen. It has only begun with cleaning activities for 15 minutes in the morning and has made great changes. I would recommend this as we are going to implement little changes collectively with the staff.

 

[SillyBill]

I was going to go down this route by myself but the quote I got from an ISO consultant company seemed very reasonable considering they would be holding my hand through the process.
I am yet to discover any long term hidden contract at the moment.

I have effectively taken over a manufacturing and installation company over the last few years. We have purchased some up to date machinery which has now completely changed our output and work loads. It was a big step initially but has paid off very quickly

Due to the growth and current market areas that we are wishing to target we need to make some changes. One of our targets requires ISO 9001 before they will entertain us.
I have however inherited an archaic ordering process where paperwork is everywhere. It is very messy and not very clean or lean. What I would like to do is combine the ISO with a new clean processing structure and overhaul the companies paper work.

The business is built on old school tooling which is starting to wear out. Should we purchase new / replacement equipment and increase our capacity as a by product I fear that we would become a victim of our own success and clients and products would suffer. We are effectively on the next step of business growth but as this happens I would like more of a clearer structure as to whats going on. Any processes that we involve now must have a positive input. Only two weeks ago, we started to lightly introduce Kaizen. It has only begun with cleaning activities for 15 minutes in the morning and has made great changes. I would recommend this as we are going to implement little changes collectively with the staff.

My experience of having done every course, sat through every audit and spoken every buzzword is to keep the shopfloor's exposure restricted to something easy to understand like 5S. Practiced well that is a lethal enough tool for efficiency and can be championed by anyone as you can understand it in 5 mins, a good test in itself for a workable system. It only needs buy in from management and staff to work.

A good way to get a blank face from an operative is when an over enthusiastic quality guy or trainer comes along and starts talking about process outputs and inputs or buy in to the Quality Policy, Continuous Improvement etc. I have genuinely seen it ruin places as it became a religion and often created a shop floor vs. a clueless, bureaucratic, buzzword, pie-chart obsessed management (albeit of course wielding black belts). We've generally tried to shelter people away from actually understanding the abstract concepts in ISO standards and the like and just focused on things like 5S on an operational level. There is a balance to all these things, I'd be wary about implementing certain things in a small business which may work at Toyota Burnaston or Rolls-Royce Derby but in a small business actually takes away one of your primary advantages vs. them/big companies, namely to be highly adaptive, not bureaucratic and quick to respond to change. As much as ISO preaches it enables you to adapt to change, monitors risks vs opportunities etc. I think the jury is out on that where there is only a handful of people in the driving seat.

 

[Ozzy]

We looked at ISO9001 but in the end opted for ISO27001 and many of the operation aspects of 9001 flowed into 27001, and we benefited in two main areas. One big benefit was, as @Mark T Jones mentioned, is taking the time out to be able to work on and looking objectively at your operation. The process you go through pushes you to do this, which we all know is something as a business owner you should but until you are pushed to very few of us actually do.
As a technology business it enabled us to optimise and secure many of our procedures.
Then the big clincher was that it streamlined our board process to secure contracts with some of our now larger clients. Not saying we may not have won the contracts anyway, but being able to evidence our information security procedures mean't it didn't take months or even years of due diligence.

 

[rpaps]

Mark & Ozzy,

Thanks for you replies.

I shall check out 27001 but it's the 9001 I currently need to obtain.

I would like to make full use of it rather than just skim through doing the bare minimum in order to achieve it. To take anything useful from it and implement it into the 'restructure' would be great.

I'm heavily opposed to cluttering up workflows with reverting back to pie charts and that kind of stuff, I won't do it and shouldn't need to. So I'll have a read to the '5s' bit.

I guess overall I am wary of spending time and energy into a change where nothing good comes of it or we are asking work for the sake of it. There is a lot to be said for a pen and a piece of paper over a software system that can't quite deliver what you need. So I appreciate your opinions greatly.

 

[Mr D]

i got ISO some years ago

we were targeting public sector who seem to like that type of nonsense

it was pretty straight forward and in truth I did benefit from an outsider’s view and input to processes.

Yes, a pain to get the processes documented and ultimately made no difference except being able to apply for what we had been applying for all along.
Caused a lot of aggro at board level as I kept rejecting what they were providing as it didn't fit the requirements.

 

[rpaps]

Well I have now bitten the bullet and going to go for it. I will be interested to see what it brings. I have decided to go with a consultant based approach. approx 1k a year for the privilege including certification.
I figure I can loose the 1k pretty easily over the course of the year and hopefully it will give me an edge.
We are a small company so no board or anything like that to impress. Our goals to better profits now lie with the doors that ISO may open and leaning up the entire operation.

 

[The Byre]

One of our targets requires ISO 9001 before they will entertain us.

That is more or less what happened with my clients.

I have however inherited an archaic ordering process where paperwork is everywhere. It is very messy and not very clean or lean. What I would like to do is combine the ISO with a new clean processing structure and overhaul the companies paper work.

That might be worth the candle and help get the people to buy-in to your new system!