ISO9000 Resources

After ISO9000 Registration...

Setting new goals after ISO9000 registration

Once your organization has been registered as complying with one of the ISO9000, it is natural to start thinking about "what comes next". This page makes the case for considering an assessment using Baldrige or similar criteria. This is a powerful method of driving continuous improvement,  building on the foundation of a documented management system.

Using ISO9000 to Support Continuous Improvement

The diagram below illustrates the difference between standardization and continuous improvement. If the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle is the wheel of continuous improvement, the management system is like the wedge.  It is designed primarily to maintain a stable, predictable status quo and to avoid backsliding.

To illustrate this, consider the purpose of a compliance audit. The ideal outcome of an ISO9000 system audit (from the perspective of the recipients) is that there is nothing more to do – since there are no non-conformances. But this doesn't mean that the organization could not become more efficient and do a better job for its customers!

In order to turn the continuous improvement wheel, we need a process to find useful things to do – to reveal opportunities to improve quality and to become more efficient. This is what an assessment using Baldrige (or similar criteria) is designed to accomplish. 

This type of assessment goes beyond a compliance audit in a number of ways:

• using a framework that has a very broad scope, covering most aspects of running an organization
• highlighting strengths and opportunities for improvement, rather than compliance and non-compliance. An assessment will always reveal many opportunities for improvement, even in a 'world class' organization.

Once these strengths and opportunities for improvement have been identified, it is a relatively simple matter to develop an improvement plan by focussing on a few areas that have the greatest leverage. And by integrating the assessment process into the annual planning cycle, the assessment process can be used to drive further improvements, year on year..

Additional Resources

• Learn about the assessment process as a natural next step after registration.
• Have you encountered resistance to change within your organization? Check out David Hutton's best-selling book on managing change for quality improvement champions.