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Teaming Up for Quality FORM Magazine, Nov. 1996 In search of quality ISO 9000 Part Two This is the second in a series of three articles profiling companies that have achieved ISO 9000 certification or are working toward that goal. by Katie Sweeney When officials at Tapecon Inc., a Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturer, first announced that the company would try to become certified in ISO 9002, an international quality standard, not all of its employees were happy about it. Matthew Michalko, a prepress technician, feared ISO would mean extensive, unnecessary changes in procedures. Other employees had reservations about the process as well, says Deborah Warner, national sales manager. "I think that's true with any change," Warner says. "But it doesn't matter what you try to do as a company-if your employees don't buy into it, it won't happen." Tapecon officials won over skeptical workers by getting them involved. They made each of their 130 employees at their Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y., locations part of a team and then solicited-and implemented-their suggestions for how to make operations more efficient. One team devised a more efficient floor plan for the Buffalo plant. Workers who inspect jobs before they are shipped suggested creating shelves with each of their names on them, allowing jobs to be assigned to specific inspectors instead of placed in a general bin. Warner says this system has been particularly successful with repeat jobs. "Now, the same person does the job each time," she says. "And that customer becomes just as important to [the inspector] as it is to the salesperson who sold the job." In addition to the teams, Tapecon assembled an ISO 9000 task force consisting of four employees-one each from sales service, prepress, production and quality control. Tapecon also hired a consultant, Peggy Murak, who meets weekly with the task force to discuss procedures. The company holds monthly meetings for all employees to discuss problems and progress. Alan Davis, president of Tapecon, says employees are committed to ISO 9000. "They understand that it really needs to happen for us to remain successful and be competitive and a cut above the rest," Davis says. Tapecon started the process more than a year ago and will undergo the test for certification, called an audit, in January. Overcoming Obstacles It hasn't been an easy road. Warner says it's not just the costs of hiring consultants and paying fees to auditors that make ISO 9000 such a tough process-it's the pain of changing your company culture. To survive, she says, a company must have a long-term commitment to ISO. "The most devastating thing is that things are going to get worse before they get better," she says. "For example, if your standard shipping for products is four weeks, you may hit a period of time when you can't get products out in four weeks because you're going through so many changes." As part of the ISO 9002 process, every Tapecon employee went through extensive quality training. Although the training has made employees and the Tapecon operation more efficient in the long run, it made things less efficient in the short run, Warner says. "We had employees that were in training all day Tuesday and Thursday," she says. "We lost two days at the production level. How do you make up that time?" In addition, as you make changes in your operation, unexpected problems are bound to come up. "If it was not one thing, it was another," she says. "What happens is that you identify a bottleneck in one place, and you fix it, but then all of a sudden you have a bottleneck someplace else." Warner says it took about a year for things to smooth out. So how do you hold onto your customers in the meantime? Communication is the key, she says. Tapecon kept its customers informed through its newsletter. Officials also encouraged distributors to come into the plant and learn about the improvements Tapecon was making. "If you're dealing with good customers that you have relationships with, they'll realize that staying with you through your growing pains is worth it in the long run," Warner says. Customers can see obvious benefits from Tapecon's quality improvements, she says. For example, some of their customers no longer inspect Tapecon's shipments because they know the company's quality is so consistent. Says Warner, "Can you imagine how much money we're saving customers when they no longer have to inspect everything and pull out parts that aren't perfect?" Tapecon also has improved its lead time. Two years ago, lead time for standard products was six weeks; today it's two weeks and dropping, she says. Warner credits the improvement to the ISO 9000 process, which helped officials identify inefficiencies and find ways to speed production. In addition, Davis says many customers told Tapecon officials that they eventually would require all suppliers to be ISO 9000 certified. "A lot of our business is in the industrial market, and a lot of our customers sell products overseas, so it's kind of a trickle-down effect," he says. Warner says about 85 percent of Tapecon's suppliers are ISO 9000 certified or going through the process. Eventually, the company probably will require all its suppliers to be certified, she says. Davis isn't complaining about the trend toward ISO. "Our quality programs were moving in that direction anyway," he says. Tapecon already had employees in quality assurance and was working on a corrective action system for solving internal and external problems. The company also was trying to improve its incoming and receiving procedures through an audit system. ISO 9000's requirements of documenting and reviewing processes fit right in with Tapecon's plans. Under ISO 9000, "If you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you should continually improve because you're constantly reviewing your processes," Davis says. And that's the key to making ISO worth the money and effort, says Warner. "If you have processes that aren't good, ISO alone won't change them," she says. "But hopefully, simultaneously you're taking a look at your operations-finding where the bottlenecks are and identifying the root causes of problems." Katie Sweeney is assistant editor of FORM Magazine. "It's not just the costs of hiring consultants and paying fees to auditors that make ISO 9000 such a tough process-it's the pain of changing your company culture." Deborah Warner National Sales Manager Tapecon Inc. What is ISO 9000? ISO 9000 was adopted in 1987 by the International Organization for Standardization and is a generic name for a series of five standards for quality management and quality assurance. The type of certification a company pursues depends on whether it is involved in the manufacturing, design or service sectors of the economy. ISO 9002 is for manufacturers. Certification does not mean a company has a quality product; it means it has a quality system that meets the written standard. Companies that apply for ISO 9000 certification must pass an audit. During the audit, quality systems officials inspect the company and interview employees to make sure that procedures outlined in documents are being followed. The audit usually lasts 11Ú2 to two days. Certification must be continually renewed-every six to nine months there is a brief audit to confirm the company is still complying with the standard, and every three years there is a completely new audit to make sure companies are still following ISO standards. Although certified companies are not required to use certified vendors, many companies give preferential treatment to ISO 9000 certified suppliers. Hiring a Consultant Dave Shoemaker, production manager at Tapecon Inc., a Buffalo, N.Y., manufacturer working toward ISO 9002 certification, just laughs when asked if companies should hire a consultant to help them through the certification process. "Definitely," he says. "If we tried to assign someone here to take on the responsibility of getting us up to the standard, it would take so much time away from that person's regular duties that we'd have to hire another person. And I don't even know that one person would be able to do it." Tapecon hired Murak & Associates, a Buffalo consulting firm it had worked with three years earlier. But what if you don't have a particular consultant in mind? What should you look for? Demo Stavros, president of WDI Inc., a systems integration and ISO 9000 consulting firm in Ypsilanti, Mich., recommends asking a consultant the following questions before signing on any dotted lines: Do you guarantee your work? Although a consultant can't guarantee that its client will implement a particular system, a consulting firm should stand behind its work, says Stavros. "If the system is at fault, and not the implementation, then the people who helped design that system should back it up with a guarantee that they will fix it with no extra charge," he says. Do you charge a fixed fee? "Cost overruns will kill you," says Stavros. When a contract has a fixed fee, you know from the outset how much you're going to spend and can budget accordingly. Although some of his customers request an hourly contract, Stavros cautions that can get expensive if you use the consultant more than you intended. What experience do you have? Pick a consultant with experience in the particular kind of ISO 9000 certification you're seeking. In addition, ask for a list of client companies who already have achieved certification, then call those companies. Does your staff include certified ISO auditors? The answer to this question should be yes. Does the contract provide for a full audit? Stavros says you may want the consultant to perform a full internal audit well before the ISO auditors arrive. "We do an audit and give them a list of what won't pass," he says. "We get as nit picky as we can. A lot of people tell us that we make the ISO audit look like a piece of cake." A consultant also should help you correct any problems that surface during the internal audit. Will you have a representative on site during the audit? "There's an intimidation factor to having an outside auditing firm coming in to your business," says Stavros. A consultant can act as an interpreter between you and the ISO auditor if you don't understand what the auditor is asking you. "It increases the comfort zone and helps the audit go a little bit smoother," he says. Moore Division Earns ISO 9001 Certification Moore Business Equipment and Service, a division of Moore Corp. Ltd.'s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, received ISO 9001 certification in September. The certification covers Moore's Dover, N.H., business equipment manufacturing facility. Moore's facilities in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Belgium and other European countries already are ISO 9000 certified. Back to Quality/ISO 9000