Quality Management Programs

[LMvCP]

I am wondering if any other small business owners around here have ever recieved any type of quality management programs (Six Sigma, ISO, etc) and if so, how did it improve the your firm's operations?

[Sachin]

My old company tried doing ISO 9001. To be honest, we had most of our processes documented as we relied on a lot of temp labor.

It helped, but not a lot.

Sachin

[LMvCP]

My old company tried doing ISO 9001. To be honest, we had most of our processes documented as we relied on a lot of temp labor.

It helped, but not a lot.

Sachin

we have a small business and just trying to get some info and feed back if at all those International Charter type programs do in fact help?

A buddy of mine basically said... if it doesnt help out your firm's operations, at least look at it from a marketing standpoint.. its soothing to some people that a firm is registered by the BBB and/or quality management programs because it shows initiative that you are trying to respond to your clients/community.

thanks anyways...

[Sachin]

Getting certified (at least for ISO 9001) costs a lot of money. There are whole armies of consultants that specialize in this sort of thing.

Basically, quality systems boil down to two things:

1. Say what you do.
2. Do what you say.

I don't know how much cash your business throws off, but we estimated it would cost more than $10,000 to get certified.

Sachin

[christopher d]

The success of using any external packaged operations program, whether dictated from a manual such as the ones listed in the thread title or brought in as enterprise software (SAP, etc) is based on management's careful rationalization of why that particular system, or any system is needed. What's the purpose? What can you get out of ISO, 6s, etc., that you can't grow at home? What particular aspects of those systems make them a perfect (or near perfect) fit for your firm? Until you can answer those questions satisfactorally, I'd stay far away from anything you have to pay for.

Then, once you've answered those questions, do a careful make-or-buy analysis.

This may seem pedantic and intuitive, but there are waaay too many firms shelling out dollars for enterprise software and certs that they simply don't need. If those you work for (in case you work for someone) are of a particularly pointy-haired nature, it'll be tough to tear them away from the shinyness of an ISO cert. In that case, when you present your analysis, use a whole lot of pretty colors in your graphs ;)