This multi-part blog article presents practical answers to frequently asked questions on improving business entities.
Its objective is to assist business leaders in these trying times, whether they are learning the basics of continuous improvement, planning their first business improvement project, or evangelizing process-oriented thinking throughout their organization.
So let’s get started…
So let’s get started…
FAQ 5 - ISO is known to be excellent within chemical and engineering industries. However, are there any points we should watch out for, before selecting ISO methodology for our company?
The ISO approach is vital for businesses and organizations to strive and develop a good reputation, as well as, to excel in future aspirations of the company. However, there are some limitations, which can make it difficult to use ISO approach for quality management and continuous improvement.
One of the limitations with the ISO for quality is that it does not have much weight when it comes to an individual’s performance in a company. Individuals are not required to be responsible for their unique contributions since, the company’s effectiveness is viewed as a whole. It can often be quite motivating and more effective for a company to allow individuals to take responsibility for their contributions.
This also helps increase employee self-esteem and integrity, which can make them work harder for the company and produce effective results. Another way in which individual assessment is beneficial is that it encourages interest and concern within the company. Therefore, one needs to take appropriate steps in order to maintain employee morale during and after implementation of ISO.
Since individual contributions are not monitored closely, ISO can also take a lot of time to find the root cause, should a problem occur.
Secondly, ISO approach can waste a lot of money. ISO often encourages companies to scrap any defaults or defective produce altogether. This is fine if all produce is perfect, but it is quite common to have few of products that are defective and not the whole lot.
In addition, this is very subjective as ‘defects’ can also be classified as- critical, major, minor etc.
Moreover, it is industry based. For e.g. in pharmaceutical industry, even a minor product defect is not acceptable since it would potentially compromise safety and/or efficacy to the patient. While, in a packaged food industry, dented cans (containing quality product) is many a times classified as ‘minor’ defect, not scrapped, and instead sold at a discounted price.
If the goal of the company is to be ‘defect-free’ or supplying only ‘high quality’ products, then ISO can end up costing the company quite a big chunk of money, in case of product/service defects. Strategic financial planning, considering this ‘all or none’ aspect, becomes vital before selecting ISO methodology for your organization.
ISO approach relies almost completely on presenting documentation that depict the system’s various procedures, which can be very time consuming and cause a company to loose focus of their business goals in the meantime.
Since those running/ managing/ leading the company, are in charge of arranging the documentation, the time spent gathering this information can take away their contributions to their routine job during that time. Companies therefore need to be up to date with their human resource planning prior to embarking on ISO journey.
You can read more about ISO methodology, advantages of ISO and limitations of ISO here.
I shall discuss more FAQs concerning effective & efficient business process improvement in upcoming parts of this blog post series. If you have any such questions about business process design or continuous improvement, please feel free to drop it in the comment section below.
By the way, if you run a company that is facing a challenge to thrive in these difficult times, I would suggest that you please revisit your business processes in order to accelerate growth and bring a quick turnaround.
One of the limitations with the ISO for quality is that it does not have much weight when it comes to an individual’s performance in a company. Individuals are not required to be responsible for their unique contributions since, the company’s effectiveness is viewed as a whole. It can often be quite motivating and more effective for a company to allow individuals to take responsibility for their contributions.
This also helps increase employee self-esteem and integrity, which can make them work harder for the company and produce effective results. Another way in which individual assessment is beneficial is that it encourages interest and concern within the company. Therefore, one needs to take appropriate steps in order to maintain employee morale during and after implementation of ISO.
Since individual contributions are not monitored closely, ISO can also take a lot of time to find the root cause, should a problem occur.
Secondly, ISO approach can waste a lot of money. ISO often encourages companies to scrap any defaults or defective produce altogether. This is fine if all produce is perfect, but it is quite common to have few of products that are defective and not the whole lot.
In addition, this is very subjective as ‘defects’ can also be classified as- critical, major, minor etc.
Moreover, it is industry based. For e.g. in pharmaceutical industry, even a minor product defect is not acceptable since it would potentially compromise safety and/or efficacy to the patient. While, in a packaged food industry, dented cans (containing quality product) is many a times classified as ‘minor’ defect, not scrapped, and instead sold at a discounted price.
If the goal of the company is to be ‘defect-free’ or supplying only ‘high quality’ products, then ISO can end up costing the company quite a big chunk of money, in case of product/service defects. Strategic financial planning, considering this ‘all or none’ aspect, becomes vital before selecting ISO methodology for your organization.
ISO approach relies almost completely on presenting documentation that depict the system’s various procedures, which can be very time consuming and cause a company to loose focus of their business goals in the meantime.
Since those running/ managing/ leading the company, are in charge of arranging the documentation, the time spent gathering this information can take away their contributions to their routine job during that time. Companies therefore need to be up to date with their human resource planning prior to embarking on ISO journey.
You can read more about ISO methodology, advantages of ISO and limitations of ISO here.
I shall discuss more FAQs concerning effective & efficient business process improvement in upcoming parts of this blog post series. If you have any such questions about business process design or continuous improvement, please feel free to drop it in the comment section below.
By the way, if you run a company that is facing a challenge to thrive in these difficult times, I would suggest that you please revisit your business processes in order to accelerate growth and bring a quick turnaround.
Related reading:
Keywords and Tags:
#businessprocessimprovement #continuousimprovement #ISO #qualitymanagement #businessprocessmodification #businessprocessreengineering #processimprovement
#businessprocessimprovement #continuousimprovement #ISO #qualitymanagement #businessprocessmodification #businessprocessreengineering #processimprovement
