ISO 9004

I am off to Thailand at the end of the month and need to do a presentation on Quality. As part of this I would like to make a summary of quality systems, and as you have all proved so useful in the past, I thought I'd use you again.

I am trying to find out an idea of numbers of people who work to ISO 9004 principles.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thanks

Nadine.

Nadine,

I don’t believe that the systems are mutually exclusive, in that if you have 9001, you must be using 9004 (whether you mean to or not).

To coin the standards phrase - 9001 & 9004 are a 'consistent pair'.

Where 9001 is more quality speak, 9004 attempts to be the practical guidance on how to make the system work effectively & how to improve - putting the meat on bones..

If you are not doing this, I don’t believe you can be running your 9001 standard correctly..

I am not saying you need to be doing everything in 9004, indeed the standard is generally quite loose e.g management should 'consider' doing..

Regards

Richard

I am trying to find out an idea of numbers of people who work to ISO 9004 principles.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated as well.

What do you need Nadine?
Wallace Tait.

These facts may be helpful, Nadine:

1
ISO 9004 was intended originally to be used before ISO 9001 not after, as has become the regrettable (and now official) poor practice. More detail in attached article...

2
BSI offer what is essentially an ISO 9004 ceritficate in the form of their BPIR product.

3
BSI will announce this month (in the UK at least) a new service of assessing an organisation against the eight management principles.

4
At least one company that I know in the UK routinely audits its individual senior managers against the eight management principles.

rgds Jim

"... if you have 9001, you must be using 9004..."

I'm afraid I couldn't possibly disagree more, Richard.

1
As I mentioned in the previous post, we were expected to use 9004 - not 9001 - to build our systems. So, ISO 9004 is packed wiith all sorts of stuff that goes way beyond ISO 9001.

2
Secondly, since the issuing of an ISO 9001 certificate doesn't even require a system to meet all the requirements of ISO 9001, it's a bit of a stretch of the imagination to say that "you must be using 9004"!

rgds Jim

An absolutely excellent article Jim.
I concur with your report.
A great read and, I believe this article shall stir up the proverbial hornets nest.
Wallace.

Thanks all, a lot of the companies I deal with don't really want to be looking at 9001, never mind anything else.

Wanted an idea of other peoples views.

Thanks again

Nadine

BSI offer what is essentially an ISO 9004 ceritficate in the form of their BPIR product.

They did. The above link is broken and I cannot find anything on the BSI website referring to the Business Performance Improvement Review (BPIR) - maybe they've given up on it. If anyone knows where the link is please let me know.

Regards,
Simon