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The case against ISO 9000by John Seddon

In brief

Not everyone is happy withthe widespread implementa-tion of ISO 9000. In theUnited Kingdom, one of thestandard’s strongest criticsis John Seddon, ManagingDirector of Vanguard Con-sulting1), who has written thebook, In Pursuit of Quality:The Case Against ISO 9000.In the following article, Mr.Seddon summarizes his argu-ments against ISO 9000which he castigates for whathe sees as its “command andcontrol” orientation. This,he says, is in direct contrastto the flexible, customer-focused approach necessaryfor business success in today’shighly competitive market-place.

People say I must have had abad experience with ISO 9000 asa child. I just did the research!Since 1979, British organizationshave been persuaded, even co-erced, into achieving certificationof their quality systems, first to theBritish Standard, BS 5750, andthen to ISO 9000, which was pub-lished in 1987 by ISO.

John Seddon is an occupationalpsychologist, researcher, lecturerand Managing Director of theBritish management consultancy,Vanguard.

1) Vanguard Consulting,VilliersHouse, 1 Nelson Street, BuckinghamMK18 1BU, United Kingdom.Tel. + 44 1280 82 22 55.Fax + 44 1280 82 22 66.WWW http://www.vanguardconsult.co.uk

Rather thanimproving the quality

and competitiveposition of

organizations,ISO 9000 has made

matters worse

BS 5750 was one of the nationalstandards from which the ISO9000 series was developed, de-spite there being no evidence thatit had merit. Everything I havelearned suggests to me that thishas been a mistake of monumen-tal proportions. Rather than im-proving the quality and competi-tive position of organizations,ISO 9000 has made mattersworse. I have found that its under-lying thinking has little or nothingto do with quality and its imple-mentation has prevented manag-ers from seeing what might havebeen seen if they had taken a dif-ferent – and genuine – qualityview. ISO 9000 is claimed to be aquality management standard,certification to it being a formalrecognition that an organizationis managed in a quality manner.

When I first came across thestandard in the mid-1980’s, I waspersuaded that the obvious over-bureaucratization was due tomanagers taking an inappropri-ately internal and administrativeattitude. At that time, I was dis-suaded from being too critical.Criticism would have implied thatI was not a supporter of thequality movement.

Through the 1980’s andinto the 1990’s, the band-wagon rolled on. Market-place obligation, drivenlargely by governmentorganizations and,latterly, the largercommercial organiza-tions, meant an ever-increasing numberof certifications.ISO 9000 becameubiquitous andits status as arequirement fordoing businesslessened thechances ofanyonequestioningwhether itwas doingany good.

The cover of John Seddon’s book,In Pursuit of Quality: The CaseAgainst ISO 9000(ISBN 1-86076-042-2), which ispublished by Oak Tree Press.Priced at GBP 18,95, it can beordered directly from Vanguard.

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I might never have questionedISO 9000’s contribution to busi-ness performance if it had notbeen for my clients asking mewhat they should do about it. Theytoo were concerned about the evi-dent bureaucratization. Theywere perplexed by the idea thatthis rather formal and strictly en-forced regime had something todo with quality. I felt unable tooffer constructive advice, so Isought out research. Then camemy first shock. We had been em-ploying this standard in UnitedKingdom for over ten years andthere was no research whichwould illuminate whether it wasdoing good or harm and, by impli-cation, no clear guidance on how,if it is at all possible, an organiza-tion might approach it benefi-cially.

of its promoters. At the time, I as-sumed this minority had taken amore productive approach. So, tolearn more, my research team vis-ited them.

What we found was shocking. Inevery case, we found evidence ofthings put in place to comply with

the standard which were makingmatters worse. In short, theseclaimants had, to be kind to them,rationalized their experience.Since that time, more opinion re-search has been published, themajority of which has been com-missioned by the certificationbodies and it shows substantiallythe same picture, although, ofcourse, the results have beengiven a more positive spin.

Since 1993, I have been re-searching case studies, the onlyreliable way to find out what or-ganizations have done as a conse-quence of certification to ISO9000. What has emerged is thatISO 9000 predictably causes peo-ple to do things which, at best, sub-optimize their organization’s per-formance and, at worst, make itconsiderably worse. These arenatural consequences of thethinking embedded in ISO 9000.Bureaucratization and its inher-ent limit on learning and flexibil-ity is always the easiest to spot. Itis caused by the various require-ments for documentation, for theauditor cannot do his or her workwithout it.

The case in fullThis article for ISO 9000

News is a synopsis of thearguments I develop in mybook, In Pursuit of Quality:The Case Against ISO 9000

In my book, I present tenarguments in the case againstISO 9000:

• ISO 9000 encourages or-ganizations to act in waysthat make things worsefor their customers.

• Quality by inspection isnot quality.

• ISO 9000 starts from theflawed presumption thatwork is best controlled byspecifying and control-ling procedures.

• The typical method of im-plementation is bound tocause sub-optimization ofperformance.

• The standard relies toomuch on people’s inter-pretations of quality, par-ticularly those of audi-tors.

• The standard promotes,encourages and explicitlydemands actions whichcause sub-optimization.

• When people are sub-jected to external con-trols, they will be inclinedto pay attention only tothose things that areaffected by the controls.

• ISO 9000 has discouragedmanagers from learningabout the theory of varia-tion.

• ISO 9000 has failed to fos-ter good customer-sup-plier relations.

• As an intervention, ISO9000 has not encouragedmanagers to think differ-ently.

Its status as arequirement for doing

business lessened thechances of anyone

questioning whetherit was doing any good

ISO 9000 is built onan ethos of inspection

Disaffection

I have since learned that, atabout this time, the institutionssupporting ISO 9000, which in-cluded the British GovernmentDepartment of Trade and Indus-try (DTI) and the various certifi-cation bodies, were all too cogni-sant of disaffection in themarket-place. Inevitably, thosewho had succeeded in persuadingothers to take the medicine weredisinclined to call a halt. Insteadthey claimed, as they do now, that,“It is OK – if you do it right”. In anattempt to get one sector moreright, the DTI launched the TickItscheme (ISO 9000 for softwaredevelopers). The only publishedresearch on the impact of TickItshows it has had no beneficial ef-fect on software quality.

In 1993, I published the firstmajor opinion study of ISO 9000.Six hundred and forty-seven or-ganizations were represented.The results were, to say the least,disturbing. Less than 15 % of thepeople who responded claimedthat their organizations hadachieved all of the benefits attrib-uted to ISO 9000 in the literature

Worst cases

Contract review, the clause dic-tating how to deal with customers,leads to precisely that: a contrac-tual attitude to customers – thelast thing you need in a market-place driven by customer choiceand the need for a value-creatingresponse. In the worst cases, Ihave found organizations beingdriven out of business because ofrequirements placed on them bytheir certification body, those ac-tions making the organizationsless attractive to their customers.

ISO 9000 is built on an ethos ofinspection. It is a reminder of thestandard’s origins. During theSecond World War, if you wantedto supply the British Ministry ofDefence (MoD) with munitions,you had to be registered to astandard from which ISO 9000was derived. The purpose was toprevent accidents in munitionsfactories and the method was toinsist on all procedures beingdocumented and independently

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The business that was going underLAN Company is just one of the many case studies in my book.

It is the story of a business that was going under, where the ownerfound himself working harder for his certification body than for hiscustomers.

LAN Co. made local area networks. Typical customers wouldinclude health service trusts and education authorities and thetypical value of a contract was GBP 500-600. As LAN Co. de-signed networks, the company was certified to ISO 9001 which,unlike ISO 9002, includes design control. Friends of the ownerremarked that this clearly meant his company was not as good asothers – he being certified to ISO 9001 while others were certifiedto ISO 9002.

LAN Co.’s ISO 9000 certification body insisted on every jobbeing documented and signed-off by the customer. However, cus-tomers often changed their minds. The auditor insisted that LANCo. was obliged to amend drawings and repeat the customers’sign-off.

Customers were not particularly impressed. It felt to them like acontinual emphasis on the contract, rather than receiving a ser-vice. They were happy to make changes and expected thosechanges to be reflected in the invoicing.

The owner did the right thing for his customers – he stoppedmaking changes to designs and had to hide the evidence from theassessor. He did so by putting all offending documents in thewomen’s toilets, the only place the certification body auditorcould not go.

checked. This is a way of workingwhich ensures that productionmeets specifications. It is amethod of control which ensuresconsistency of output. It solved aproblem of the time.

A quality approach, by contrast,would be to continuously improveoutput and for that you need dif-ferent methods derived from dif-ferent thinking. At the time thatour munitions factories were con-trolling output through control ofprocedures, some American mu-nitions factories were improvingoutput by reducing variation – stilla foreign concept to most Britishmanagers. This work was led byDr. W. Edwards Deming.

Following the war, Deming’sideas were ignored by Americanindustry in a growing market thattolerated the waste of inefficientproduction (Deming used to joke:“Let’s make toast the Americanway: I’ll burn – you scrape!”). TheJapanese were the first to take himseriously. The rest, as they say, ishistory.

During the time that the Japa-nese have been perfecting world-class systems, we have foisted anunproved instrument upon our or-ganizations, itself a strange thing

for a so-called quality communityto have done. One might havethought they would first test its fit-ness for purpose. The Toyota Cor-poration, to name just one exam-ple, has shown what can beachieved with entirely differentthinking and methods. Thesemethods are not peculiar to theJapanese, but they spring from aperspective which is diametricallyopposed to the thinking in ISO9000. Would that the quality com-munity had insisted on provingISO 9000’s value before it waspromulgated, they might havebeen obliged to find a model ofmanagement from which allwould have benefited.

Serious charge

Which brings us to the mostserious charge against ISO 9000.It has merely reinforced currentmanagement wisdom – the verything that has held competitiveperformance back. ISO 9000’sprecepts fit hand-in-glove withmass production, or “commandand control” thinking. Control ofwork through specifying and in-specting procedures is a variation

As the cover of John Seddon’s book, ‘In Pursuit of Quality’, shows(see p. 11), this British management consultant sees himself, whereISO 9000 is concerned, as going resolutely against the current.

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on the theme of designing work infunctional specialisms, separat-ing decision-making from doingthe work and giving managersthe job of making decisions onthe basis of output or budgetaryinformation.

There is a better way. It startsfrom a view of the organizationas a system. It is an “outside-in”,rather than a “top-down” view.The structure of the organizationis designed according to “flow”,rather than “function”; pro-cedures relate to purpose andare developed by those whodo the work since they are farmore able to improve perform-ance than managers using irrel-evant and misleading “rear-view-mirror” techniques.

Stifling attitude

The defenders of the standardcontinue to maintain that “it’sOK – if you do it right”. I havebeen shown many who were pur-ported to be doing it right only tofind the same general problems.It is true that some benefited fromclarifying their procedures, butthese benefits could have beenhad without the accompanyingbureaucracy and stifling attitudeto improvement.

And it is not just that ISO 9000has resulted in major or minordamage to current performance.The standard acts as a shieldagainst seeing what could bedone to improve performanceradically. If the European Com-mission is serious about improv-ing the competitiveness of or-ganizations, the abolition of ISO9000 would at least put a brakeon the current damage and, moreimportantly, such action mightcapture the interest of managerswho remain unconvinced thatISO 9000 is anything more than acost of doing business.

Does ISO 9000 improveproduct quality?

by Reuben Rabinovitz, Eli A. Glushkovsky,Aharon Shatzkin, Daniel Sipper

In brief

“Does ISO 9000 certifica-tion impact on suppliers’product quality?” The an-swer is a resounding “yes!”according to Israel’s largestcommunications equipmentmanufacturer, Telrad, whichcarried out a survey of 111suppliers. The four collabo-rators in the study, co-au-thors of this article, analysedsuppliers by size, type (pro-ducer or vendor), whetherISO 9000-certified or not,and if “initiated” into qual-ity system implementationby the company. The basisfor determining “quality”was the percentage of rejectedbatches per year per supplier.

They found that ISO 9000-certified suppliers achievedhigher product quality thanuncertified suppliers, regard-less of type and size, andsuppliers initiated by Telradeven more so. Also, the studyrevealed better quality, onaverage, from direct pro-ducer/suppliers than ven-dors, from small as opposedto large suppliers, and fromthose who had been ISO9000-certified earlier in the1992-1996 period under re-view.

The message to Telrad, andindeed to other companieswith many component sup-pliers, is actively to encour-age and guide their suppliersin ISO 9000 implementa-tion. According to the study,there is likely to be a measur-able payback in improvedproduct quality as a result.

In recent years, ISO 9000 certi-fication has become a major toolof quality enhancement and aquality “must” in many organiza-tions around the world. Profes-sional literature is full of ISO 9000-related topics. However, oneaspect is missing: the measureableimpact of ISO 9000 implementa-tion on quality.

The effect is usually expressedin general statements such as,“although ISO 9000 does notguarantee a quality product, itdoes specify the criteria by whicha quality or service can be consist-ently expected”1). In contrast, wepresent in this article an empiricalstudy of ISO 9000 effectivenessamong a sample of suppliers, withdistinct and measureable qualita-tive results.

The study was carried out atTelrad Telecommunication andElectronic Industries2), Israel’slargest communications equip-ment manufacturer. The companyhas annual worldwide sales ofabout USD 400 million, an annualpurchasing budget of over USD150 million, and some 500 suppli-ers located in Israel, Europe, NorthAmerica and the Far East.

Telrad initiated the ISO 9000implementation process in 1992and obtained certification in 1993.The company prefers to work withISO 9000-certified suppliers andactively encourages those not al-ready pursuing certification to doso by offering them guidance.

In Figure 1, we show a time-based representation of the rate at

The key issueaddressed was: ‘DoesISO 9000 certificationimpact on productquality?’