Assurance and Improvement

[jsdwd@netcom.com (John)]

This is a follow up to Jean-Marie's post about ISO9000 and Deming, and is
in response to many other postings on the subject.

A couple of weeks ago I had occasion to visit a factory in Malaysia.  The
factory assembles printed circuit boards.  They are ISO 9000 approved and
advertise that fact.  They talk about TQM, and continuous improvement
interchangeably with their ISO discussions.  Obviously I don't know what
they are thinking, but it appeared to me that ISO 9000 is equated with
those other endeavors.

They produce copious paperwork to document their receiving, incoming
audits, vendor corrective action, line loss, in-house corrective action,
etc. They have methods to calibrate the test equipment and use them
regularly and, in the main, provide the assurance that some basic
manufacturing practices are observed.   I observed the paperwork being
prepared first hand and from looking at the records it is apparent that
this system is in use.  They are not 'faking it' as is sometimes the case.

That is what ISO as it has been practiced does.  It provides a vendor with
an assurance that some basically sound manufacturing practices are adhered
to.

It is not a 'quality system' (Nor do I think it was designed to be).  It is
not a system of improvement.  It is a standard (as can be seen by its
name); nothing more/nothing less.

This factory had only one 'control chart' and its limits were set at the
specifications.  There were no quality improvement teams engaged in the day
in and day out incremental improvement of the kind shown so well in Don
Wheeler's video on the Japanese Control Chart.

One could envision that in 3 or 4 years this factory would still be
complying with the standard operating daily with about the same level of
defects, re-work ("touch-up") they have now.

As factories go, it was ok.  Nothing particularly good, nothing
particularly bad.  But TQM or SPC or whatever acronym or program of the
moment (e.g., 6 sigma) was no where in evidence and they were far, far away
from anything approaching world=class quality.

Just thought I'd share my thoughts with the group.  Some questions for
discussion might be:

1.  What should one expect from a standard?  Deming wrote and spoke widely
in praise of standards.

2.  Do ISO 900x and Deming's SoPK  have the same aim?  Are they in any way
in opposition to each other?

3.  What is the difference between an improvement program (e.g.,. TQM,
Six-Sigma, SPC) and quality 'assurance'?

4.  Is Deming good and TQM bad?  Is the SoPK right and Six-Sigma wrong?
Might it not be better to think of these efforts as being strung along a
dimension rather than at odds with each other?

Oh well, just some grist for the mill.

John Dowd
jsdwd@netcom.com

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