Difficulties and issues in ISO9001 quality management system implementation – Literature reviewed

The companies are always faced with minor or major difficulties in conforming,  maintaining and improving the quality management system. It is important that organization aware on the issues in order to come out with relevant strategy to minimized issues and problem in implementing effective quality management system according to ISO9001 standards. Here we discussed difficulties and issues identified by researcher in quality management system:

1.  Magd (2008) surveyed, identified top management commitment and the lack of qualified personnel to be the major barriers for the effective implementation.

2.   Zeng et al. (2007) found that the main barriers were the short-sighted goal for “getting certified”, the over-expectation on ISO 9001 standard, the mandatory requirement in some industries and the following others in certification.

3. Prajogo (2008) identified readiness to change is lacking and stronger resistance from professional i.e. technical staff.

4.  In the study of Gotzamani et al. (2007), the surveyed companies confronted with difficulties in dealing with practices such as promoting social and cultural activity of personnel, managing risks related to financial resources, developing business strategy based on information from the external environment and developing long-lasting relations with suppliers.

5.   In the study of van der Wiele et al. (2005), few of the companies regarded the required conversion to the revised ISO 9001:2000 standard as too difficult or costly.

6.  The results from the study of Casadesus and Karapetrovic (2005) seem to support the notion that ISO 9001:2000 faces a number of perhaps insurmountable challenges, because the companies reported higher levels of implementation and maintenance costs with respect to ISO 9001:2000 in comparison with the ISO 9001/2/3:1994 standards.

7. The study of Singh et al. (2006) revealed small points of differences in difficulties faced with ISO 9001 implementation by manufacturing and service companies. The service companies had fewer problems with teamwork, training of personnel, and with conflicting interpretations of the requirements of the standard, in comparison with the manufacturing companies.

8.  In the study of Boiral andRoy (2007), the four groups of companies created according to their motivation (quality enthusiasts, ritual integrators, ISO integrators, and dissidents) did not differ significantly with regard to human resource problems associated with the implementation of the standard. Nevertheless, the “dissidents” experienced more human resource problems, such as a lack of resources and a lack of support from both employees and top management. However, differences among the three other groups were not significant. Bureaucracy problems and opinions about the audit process basically followed the same pattern as the human resource problems. The “dissidents” had clearly different views on these two issues, reporting higher levels of bureaucracy problems and having amore critical viewof the audit process. However, the three other groups were not significantly different on these two aspects.

9.   With regard to effective audit of the standard, Zeng et al. (2007) found that the main problems were the lack of commitment from some certifying bodies, the excessive competition between certifying bodies and the offering of a total packaged service from consultancy to certification by certifying bodies.

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   Magd (2006) found that the most important problem faced by manufacturing organizations regarding the registration agencies was the high costs associated to the auditing process.

Discussions

There are 2 majors difficulties or issues faced by organization in implementation of ISO9001. The first issues is related with Human, Second issues is related with Cost.

Human resources issues included lack commitment, support, team work, awareness, competency while the cost issues included, the certification, consultancy, beaureaucracy, and documentation.

Next discussions, will discuss on critical factors to successfully implement the ISO9001.

References - as per next post

Adopted from

Evangelos L. Psomas and Christos V. Fotopoulos” A meta analysis of ISO 9001:2000 research – findings and future research proposals” IJQSS pg 128-144