The Seven Quality Management Principles (Quality Magazine)

Last week, Quality Magazine published my article, "The Seven Quality Management Principles." It's their article now so I won't post the text of it here, but you can find it by following the link. I hope you find it useful! 

What’s Changing in ISO 9000 (Quality Digest)

This morning, Quality Digest published my article, "What’s Changing in ISO 9000?" It's their article now so I won't post the text of it here, but you can find it by following the link. I hope you find it useful! 

What's in the new ISO 9000?

Two years ago* I wrote about some changes that had been proposed in the ISO 9000:2015 standard, Quality management systems — Fundamentals and vocabulary. Since that time, the responsible committee TC176 decided to move forward with an update, and they have recently posted a Draft International Standard (ISO/DIS 9000) for review and voting. This draft contains numerous changes and updates. And to be clear, the DIS has not been formally approved yet. Something might still change. On the other hand, since the document is now public, the confidentiality rules on committee work no longer apply and we can discuss it publicly.

For those who want to follow along at home:

⇒⇒ YOU CAN BUY A COPY OF ISO/DIS 9000 FROM THIS WEBPAGE HERE. ⇐⇐   

What's changing?

Remember that ISO 9000 is like a dictionary: it contains definitions of technical terms, and it contains explanations of fundamental concepts. So the changes include new technical terms, and new fundamental concepts. In addition, the committee rewrote many existing passages even while keeping their substance. 

Rewriting passages

I tried to keep track of the changes in wording, to see if I could discover a common thread, and finally gave up. In many cases the changes seemed no more than another way to say the same thing; other times they introduced qualifiers which might be helpful but were probably not really essential. In some places the new text backs away from promising that Quality management will bring you success,** but in other places it adds those suggestions where they weren't before.*** 

The only absolutely consistent change that I detected was that ISO DIS 9000 no longer refers to itself as an International Standard. Time and again the phrase "this International Standard" has been replaced with "this document." Where the Introduction to the current edition promises that "This International Standard … provides the foundation for other QMS standards" [Emphasis mine.] the Draft says more modestly that "This document … provides the foundation for quality management and quality management systems (QMS) standards." In fact there is only one point in the whole document where the Draft retains the words "this International Standard," and I am certain it represents a copy-paste error.****

Does anyone know why? Is there a technical reason that ISO 9000 will no longer count as an "Inter­national Standard" after this edition is published? I don't know, but I'd love to understand it better.

New technical terms

The new Draft standard defines a lot of new words. Oddly enough, it also deletes a few old ones.

There are five technical terms deleted from the vocabulary definitions in the new Draft, and they all relate to configuration management. In this version, you can no longer find definitions for: change control, configuration authority, configuration control board, configuration management, or dispositioning authority. Again, does anyone know why? It's not like these concepts aren't important. Nor has the committee taken a principled stand to move configuration management topics into a different document, because the new Draft still contains definitions for configuration baseline and configuration status accounting.***** So I'm puzzled. Do you understand it?

At the same time, the committee added far more terms than it deleted. I count eighty-six new terms. A few of these relate to traditional Quality topics, which makes their earlier exclusion look like an oversight: complainant, form, good practice, result, work instruction. There are even two new terms related to configuration management (configuration information and configuration item), which makes the loss of the others still more of a puzzle. Then there are terms related to ancillary disciplines like project management (project life cycle, project phase), or to tools that have become popular enough to be considered more or less standard (change matrix, dashboard).

But over half the new terms—forty-five in all—relate to government and voting. These terms aren't used anywhere else in the new Draft, so it's not like they are part of the regular conceptual infrastructure. They seem to come from ISO/TS 54001:2019, Quality management systems: Particular requirements for the application of ISO 9001:2015 for electoral organizations at all levels of government: terms like electoral body, outsourced electoral process, ballot proposal, electoral service development plan, and so on. I assume that the committee wants to pull all the technical vocabulary for all specialized applications of quality management into one large pool where they can be kept consistent with each other, rather than letting them hide in specialized documents where they can be scattered and hard to find. But I wasn't part of the subcommittee which decided this point, so I am only guessing. 

New concepts

Then there are the principles and the concepts. Here there has been both rearrangement and addition.

In the first place, whole sections have been rearranged. The 2015 edition broke up clause 2 as follows:

2.1 General

2.2 Fundamental concepts

2.3 Quality management principles

2.4 Developing the QMS using fundamental concepts and principles

The new DIS 9000 swaps the position of concepts and principles, and then splits concepts into "fundamental" and "additional" as follows:

2.1 General

2.2 Quality management principles

2.3 Fundamental quality management concepts

2.4 Additional concepts relevant to quality management

2.5 Developing the QMS using fundamental concepts and principles 

Here in this blog, we just finished a two-month series on the Quality management principles (starting here and ending last week), so I'm happy to report that there were no important changes to that section. I won't have to rewrite two months' worth of posts. 😀 Of course all the paragraph numbers changed when the principles moved from clause 2.3 to clause 2.2. And there were minor wording changes like I described above. But that's it.

Among the concepts, … well, the existing concepts that were carried forward didn't change much, though some were put in clause 2.3 and others in clause 2.4.****** But there were a lot of new concepts added. Some of these "new concepts" are familiar terms that Quality professionals have been using for decades, but which were never before now brought into this standard. Others are … a lot newer. Here's the list of new concepts that have been added:

Quality management

Quality assurance

Quality control

Quality planning

Process management

Risk-based thinking

Organizational quality culture

Continual improvement

Integrated management system

Circular economy

Emerging technologies

Innovation

Change management

Customer experience

Knowledge management

Information management

People aspects

Business continuity

It's quite a list. Each one gets a short essay of a couple paragraphs (the longest is a page), explaining what it is and why it is listed.

Where does this leave us?  

I think the committee is trying to do too much. Most of the new Draft is fine, of course. But that list of new concepts is too long. Or rather, it's not the length that troubles me. It's that a few of the concepts—circular economy, for example, or emerging technologies—have only the thinnest connection to Quality.

To be clear, I don't think these concepts are unimportant. And I recognize that the committee is trying to encourage businesses to look past tomorrow, to take account of the issues that lurk in the shadows, waiting for them in the wider world. Emerging technologies affect all of us, like it or not. Innovation has become a fact of life in the marketplace. And the more we can adopt the perspective of a circular economy, the less strain we will put on our resource base, our supply chains, and our natural environment. These topics are all important ones to think about, and the actions stemming from them are valuable things to do.

But they're not about Quality. Quality is about satisfying the needs and expectations of customers and other interested parties. And while it is important to understand the impact that our actions will have on the natural environment or on future generations, it's a stretch to identify either the environment or our successor generations as "interested parties." What's more, I worry that trying to do too much will distract us from focusing on the topic at hand. For this reason, I'm inclined to think that ISO 9000 should stay in its lane.  

This is exactly the same argument I made when we discussed whether the Quality standards should address climate change. You may remember that the majority disagreed with me last time, so I won't be surprised if they disagree with me this time too. It happens.

To put the best face on it, I do understand that the committee is trying to nudge businesses and other organizations into considering these important issues. And in a sense, this document is a good place to put these topics, precisely because it is explanatory and not directive. ISO 9000 never tells you what to do; that's ISO 9001's job. ISO 9000 just tells you what things mean, words and concepts. So if you really don't care what circular economy means, you can skip that part and no harm done. No auditor is going to quiz you about it later.

It almost looks as if the committee has decided to make ISO 9000 into an overall Generic Framework for Organizational Management. Maybe that's even a useful thing to do. But it's not what I was expecting from the document title.

__________

* Has it really been that long? Time flies when you're having fun! 

** In the 2015 edition, clause 2.3.1.2 begins, "Sustained success is achieved when an organization attracts and retains the confidence of customers and other relevant interested parties." The new Draft deletes this sentence in its entirety. It does retain a later sentence which offers no more than that "Understanding current and future needs of customers and other interested parties contributes to the sustained success of the organization." [My emphasis.] Also, for some reason the new Draft shuffles around the order of the sentences—not just here, but in most of the clauses that were otherwise retained more or less intact.

*** In the 2015 edition, clause 2.1 para. 1 ends, "The impact of quality extends beyond customer satisfaction: it can also have a direct impact on the organization’s reputation." The new Draft adds the words "and sustained success" before the period. 

**** Note 2 to definition 3.2.10 ("quality management system consultant") says, "This International Standard provides guidance on how to distinguish a competent quality management system consultant from one who is not." [Emphasis mine.] Now in fact ISO DIS 9000 says nothing at all about the competence of quality management system consultants. But another standard does discuss this subject: ISO 10019:2005, Guidelines for the selection of quality management system consultants and use of their services. What is more, the definition of "quality management system consultant" that we find in the new DIS 9000 appears word-for-word in ISO 10019:2005, along with two notes. The two notes are also repeated word-for-word in the new Draft, and the second of those notes promises to distinguish competent consultants from incompetent ones. 

***** The Alphabetical index of terms at the end of the new Draft standard also lists configuration object, but the item reference pointer is wrong and the term never appears in the text of clause 3. It has been replaced by configuration item, which has the exact same definition here in the Draft that configuration object has in the 2015 edition.

****** The concept "Support" from the 2015 edition is covered by the concept "People aspects" in the new DIS.    

      

Seven principles

Euclid, By Jusepe de Ribera - J. Paul
Getty Museum, Public Domain.

In day to day work, we often take for granted our basic understanding of Quality as a discipline. This is as it should be. Normally we're busy, we've got problems to solve, and we know that the Quality tools will help us solve them. There's no need to go all the way back to Euclid every time we have to measure a right angle.

But suppose we wanted to go back? What foundations does the Quality discipline actually stand on? Are there any, or is it just something we cooked up among ourselves because it sounded good?

Of course the answer depends on what part of the Quality discipline you ask about. The field's statistical tools are all based (obviously!) on statistics, which is a well-understood branch of mathematics. Problem-solving methods like PDCA are basically an application of the scientific method to industrial or business problems.

What about management systems? Are those based on anything?

Yes, actually they are.

The standard ISO 9000:2015 enumerates seven basic Quality Management Principles, on which rests the whole structure of the ISO quality management system standards, as well as any particular quality management system you or I might implement for our own companies. Because these principles are so fundamental, I thought it could be useful if I take a few weeks to analyze them one at a time, in order to unpack what each principle means and why it is there. That's my plan for the next seven weeks, unless it gets interrupted by something urgent.

But there's a question I'd like to address right at the beginning: Why these principles in particular? Is there really something that makes them more fundamental than any others?

The seven quality management principles are these:

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Engagement of people
• Process approach
• Improvement
• Evidence-based decision making
• Relationship management    

Clearly they are all important. Clearly they are all good things to do. But what makes them any more fundamental than any other principles you might think of?

The point is that quality management systems are designed for use by organizations. 

• An organization is a social organism. 
• In order to continue to exist (to survive, or especially to prosper), an organization must use rational self-reflection in order to adapt to its environment.
• And in order to pursue Quality, an organization must (by definition) focus on the needs and wants of its customers and interested parties.

All of this follows more or less from the definition of quality management systems, and from basic observations about the nature of organizations. But look at the consequence.

• Customer focus means that the organization has to focus on the needs and wants of its customers and interested parties.
• Leadership and Engagement of people are fundamental to the definition of an organization as a social organism. Without Leadership, there is no unity or common purpose, and therefore no organism. Without Engagement of people there is no organism in another sense, because the people will just wander away.
• The Process approach and a commitment to Improvement give the organization the tools for rational self-reflection.
• Evidence-based decision making and Relationship management both mean that the organization adapts to its environment. Evidence-based decision making is how the organization adapts to the facts in its environment. And Relationship management is how the organization adapts to the other entities (persons, interested parties, or other organizations) in its environment. 

That's what makes these principles so fundamental.

In the coming weeks, we'll unpack them in detail.

What words would YOU add?

Last week I asked you what changes you would make to the ISO 9001 standard if it were up to you, and I described some of the suggestions I've heard from other people. But ISO 9001 doesn't sit in a vacuum. There is a whole constellation of related standards to consider as well. What about those? Would you like to update them too?

Let's look at a couple in particular. This week I want to ask about ISO 9000, Quality management systems – Fundamentals and vocabulary. Then next week I'll ask about ISO 19011, Guidelines for auditing management systems. In both cases, I'll tell you some of the things I've heard other people suggest, and I'll ask you to consider what changes YOU think are important.

So what about ISO 9000? This standard explains the "fundamentals" of quality management systems. This means it contains short descriptions (from a paragraph to a short essay) about the foundational concepts of quality—concepts like "customer focus" or "process approach"—and then it contains a long section of formal definitions. These definitions are then used across the whole family of related standards. As the Scope section of ISO 9000 states, "This International Standard specifies the terms and definitions that apply to all quality management and quality management system standards developed by ISO/TC 176."

So if we update ISO 9000, that means adding (or removing) concepts and definitions related to quality management systems. Therefore my question to you can be rephrased as, "What new concepts or definitions do you think we need to clarify or define in order to talk unambiguously about quality management systems? What new words do we need to add to the QMS dictionary?"

To be clear, there are no current plans to update ISO 9000. But that doesn't stop people from thinking about things they'd like to see. What follows are some of the suggestions I've heard from other people over the last few months. Meanwhile I'd like you to think about your own suggestions, and add them in the comments.

Adding new topics

Some of the words that I've heard suggested relate to topics that simply have not been addressed by quality management systems before now. Climate change is prominent on this list, of course. One person actually said it would be better to discuss climate change in ISO 9000 than in ISO 9001, because ISO 9000 could provide a conceptual explanation without having to get tangled up in specifying requirements for certification. (And of course most of the pushback related to discussions of climate change are tied to how certification requirements might change.) Another new term that came up in the same conversation was circular economy. Here the idea was that the concept of a circular economy can improve business performance once we reclassify anything thrown away—anywhere in the supply chain—as "waste."

The world's experience with COVID-19 prompted some other proposals, among them remote work and remote audit. Also, while the concept of a supply chain is not new, I've heard the idea that we should rethink how we approach it. In particular, one person said we should think about securing the supply chain. I think his exact words were, "Inventory is not always bad."

Emerging technologies inspired several proposed new concepts, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the same way, I heard several ideas for terms in the conceptual space around obsolescence. Rounding out the theme of change were suggestions like agility and demographic change.

Finally, I heard more than once the thought that ISO 9000 should clearly explain the concepts of ethics and integrity, along with organizational culture. Longtime readers may remember that I took up the question late last year whether the ISO 9000 family of standards needs a regulation about ethics, but the idea is ever-fresh.

Developing current topics

Then there were suggestions which did not so much propose new concepts, but asked for a fuller explanation of existing ones. Some of the concepts that I've heard people talk about include:

• Management system standard integration, since it is becoming ever more common for organizations to implement a single integrated management system that complies with multiple standards at once. (Commonly these include ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001.)
• Knowledge management, since the concept was introduced into the 2015 edition of ISO 9001 without much preparation or explanation. One person suggested that knowledge management could be combined with control of documents and records in a more general concept of access to information.
• Customer experience, as a more general category than customer satisfaction. After all, so the argument went, the absence of complaints doesn't necessarily mean the customer is happy. Someone else went even farther and said we should start to consider customer empathy.
• People aspects, as a broader category than performance management. The idea here was that if ISO 9000 takes seriously the concept engagement of people, then there are many angles to consider, relating (for example) to values as much as to objective working conditions.

Should ISO 9000 be updated at all?

Finally, some of the people I spoke to addressed the question whether ISO 9000 should be updated at all. Even here there was not universal agreement.

The arguments in favor of changing ISO 9000 were mostly straightforward. There are new concepts relevant to the implementation of quality management systems, there are new technologies that the standard has to account for, and there are concepts which have been inadequately clarified up till now. Other people pointed out that there have been discussions whether to make changes to ISO 9001, and any changes there will involve concepts that have to be reflected in ISO 9000.

But it was around this last idea that I also heard some voices of caution. After all, they pointed out, it is possible that ISO 9001 might not change. In that case, it would be risky to change ISO 9000, because new definitions might change the meaning of the ISO 9001 requirements even though the text itself remained untouched. Clearly users of the ISO 9001 standard would see such an outcome as (at best!) a dirty trick on the part of the committee, and so we should be careful not to let it happen.

 

So there are the suggestions I have heard for updating ISO 9000. Once again, now it's your turn. How would YOU update ISO 9000 if it were up to you?

Please leave a comment and let me know.