QIC Guru

Some of the horror stories about ISO 9001 certification include companies that have binders of procedures, work instruction and forms and have been trying to implement ISO 9001 unsuccessfully for years. Some have spent $50,000 and others more than $200,000 on internal resources and/or consultants. Some have had a prior quality manager who wrote a management system and then left the company, and no other employee knew how to continue the management system requirements. Some have gone through three quality managers, each defining, adding to the last quality management system or adding confusion by changing requirements.

In many instances, companies that have invested considerable time and money in the process of certification have a hard time letting go of it even when it has proven not to be effective or useful. A company must decide if it wants to chase bad money with good money when faced with this problem. It must consider letting the existing management system go and documenting a new and effective management system from scratch. An important part of the ISO 9001 standard is preventing recurrence of a problem. Therefore, it is simple common sense to change or improve a management system and the associated philosophy when the management system is found ineffective.