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Subject:Re: ISO 9000 series quality procedures From:"Peter Ring, PRC" <prc -at- ISA -dot- DKNET -dot- DK> Date:Wed, 26 Nov 1997 09:46:54 +1
Joe Miller wrote:
> The purpose of ISO 9000, as I understand it (the company I work for
> is ISO 9001 certified), has nothing to do with quality. It's
> purpose is to be able to certify that we have procedures for
> designing and manufacturing our products, including manuals.
I have worked a lot with ISO 9000, including collecting information
for (interviewing IBM, Ford, Siemens, etc.) and writing a major study
for the Danish Government about the use of ISO 9000. I have even read
the whole set of standards. And I can assure you that ISO 9000 has a
lot to do with quality.
The basic idea behind ISO 9000 is that to produce products at a
_specified, desired_ quality LEVEL (which may be fairly low!), you
must have written procedures for how you will ensure the desired
quality level, and you must follow these procedures.
Please note, that ISO 9000 covers much more than just the technical
quality of the products. It typically also includes the company's
trading and delivery procedures, and the technical documentation.
Unfortunately, in most cases, it only covers the_internal_ technical
documentation. And IF the external documentation is included, it most
often (but of course not always) only covers the two points mentioned
below:
> Peter Ring wrote: (God dag, Peter !)
> > The more or less worthless ones typically contains:
> >
> > - Instructions for standard lay-out of the technical documentation,
> > incl. the manuals.
> >
> > - Procedures for technical control and linguistic control of the
> > documentation.
I want to point out, that they are only worthless if they are vague
and unspecific, and that these two points should be a _part_ of the
ISO 9000 for technical documentation. But to my opinion, at least
usability testing procedures should be added to the ISO 9000 where
applicable, and for many companies an audience analysis and how to
handle its consequences should be added, too.
> Note well: I insist on quality, even though the ISO 9000
> certification doesn't !
If it doesn't, I wonder how your company got the certificate!
Greetings from Denmark
Peter Ring
PRC (Peter Ring Consultants)
- specialists in user friendly manuals and audits on manuals.
prc -at- isa -dot- dknet -dot- dk http://isa.dknet.dk/~prc/
- the "User Friendly Manuals" website with links, bibliography, list
of prof. associations, and tips for technical writers.
