Quality management

The family of standards ISO 9000 provides guidance on Quality Management Systems (QMS) and includes some of the most internationally known and applied standards, like ISO 9001:2000.

The participation of NORMAPME in the work of ISO TC 176 is of crucial importance for SMEs. In recent years, large companies as well as public entities are increasingly requesting ISO quality certifications to their SME suppliers and contractors. Alberto Pasquali, NORMAPME expert in ISO TC 176, attended all relevant meetings of ISO TC 176 and sub groups.

In October 2006, NORMAPME carried out a consultation among its members in order to define a common position on a proposed enlargement of the scope of ISO 9001. The collected opinions expressed either slight favour to the proposal or lack of relevance for SMEs, thus, NORMAPME decided to endorse it. Therefore, Mr Pasquali maintained this position during the plenary meeting of TC 176 that eventually rejected the proposal.

Since 2004, TC 176 has been revising ISO 9001:2000 in order to publish a new version in 2009. The main issue that has been faced during this work is diminishing trust in ISO certifications among users and stakeholders. This is partly due to some shortcomings of the standard, however, mainly to common bad practices of auditors and certifiers who aimed at consolidating their business rather than performing reliable conformity controls. Despite the wide presence of certified companies in supply chains of several sectors, namely automotive, telecom, food and others, contracting firms reported cases of non-conformance of quality and reliability in their supplies.

As reported by the expert, instead of acting on its certification and accreditation schemes, the response of ISO to this worrying situation was to revise ISO 9001 in order to include new and more severe requirements. This approach was favoured by the powerful lobby of certifiers and auditors, but was opposed by the representatives of industry. Thus, the contribution of the expert was mainly in opposing the increasing requests of many drafters. Moreover, he was engaged in making comments and proposing amendments in order to increase the clarity of the standard and avoid wrong interpretations.

ISO TC 176 is also drafting its new norm ISO 9004 which will be renamed as a new ISO 9XXX number. This standard is supposed to provide guidelines for management performance improvements in order to achieve a competitive and sustainable development of the organization.

In this framework, our expert has obtained an important result for SMEs. TG1.20 in charge of drafting the new ISO 9004, assigned the NORMAPME expert the task of creating and coordinating a group called "International Operational Unit for sustainable growth and competitiveness in SMEs" (IOU). Such group is made of SMEs that will act as pilot organizations and will test the future draft version of the standard. The comments will be collected and complied through the IOU and Mr Pasquali will be in charge of transmitting them to TG1.20.