I was recently at a meeting with some colleagues and the subject of forged certificates was brought up. We discussed the fact that some organizations do have the audacity of not just creating a fake certificate, but sometimes even wanting to change registrars. Seems odd? Later on, I was asked by a reader for some tips on how to find out if a registration or certificate is valid or not. The reader noticed while auditing their potential supplier that the processes in this company did not look very much in control the way an ISO certified company would.

So here I'm with some concise steps and links that can hopefully help anybody confirm if a certain organization is indeed ISO certified.

In case you are not sure if the equipment you are currently using for your monitoring and measuring activities is the most adequate equipment or if you are wondering why such as expensive tool is used to inspect a certain part, then it may be worth for you to understand tolerances, accuracy and what the impact of the equipment on meeting your specification requirements is.

When I started my career nearly 20 years ago, the world was a little different. People were still smoking in the workplace, Dilbert was in everybody’s desk and the quality program of the month was the joke du jour. Many things have changed since then for the goodness of the world and the quality of products and services, but the fact is, it wasn’t easy. So if you are just starting your quality career or if you have been there, you may want to know that reaching for continual improvement is really not so easy and a caveman could not do it!

I’m sure you’ve heard of laptops being stolen, but have you heard of laptops being swapped? Lost or stolen laptops and the data they carry are just one of the disasters that may ail you or your organization one day. In reality, there are many more security incidents that can affect the security of your organization or employees, putting sensitive information at risk. 

Whether your organization is adopting the ISO 27001 Information Security Management System standard or not, whether your organization is small or large, or whether you deal with top secret information or not, nowadays everyone needs to be aware of information security. Information has become such an intricate part of every individual and most certainly every organization, that ignoring this area is not an option. In this article, I present to you 9 basic controls I believe are essential in every organization in order to preserve the security of their information.

When a quality management system is implemented, results are evident immediately: reduction in warranty cost, reduction in rework, reduction in scrap, higher profit margins, etc. Would you agree that ISO and other quality initiatives such as Lean, Six Sigma, 5S can significantly improve any company’s processes -if requirements are correctly implemented? Why, if you know that a good quality management system improves your processes, are you then reluctant to include all company processes in this system? Why would most companies barely include sales on any quality initiatives? If and only if you apply the same ISO and quality concepts to the entire Sales process, inside and outside sales, you stand to see significant improvements.

Ok, so we’ve been certified to the ISO 9001 standard for the longest. Yes our processes are better, we have gotten new customers over the years because of the certification, and yes we track our objectives and customer satisfaction. But is there anything else left to be extracted out of our program and its recurrent costs? Our sales don’t seem to be significantly affected by our certification anymore, and our improvements seem to be stagnated. So what else can ISO and other quality programs do for us? Boy oh boy, if you could only let top management cover themselves in Continual Improvement, would you only know the true benefits that ISO and other quality programs can bring.

I still remember it, it was 1997 and the company had just hung a new projector from the ceiling. As with every new tool, I jumped on the bandwagon and switched from slides to using the PC and projector to show my presentation. Unfortunately, Murphy was in the meeting too and my presentation along with other managers like me, did not work. I will never forget Mr. Gil, who rests in peace, when he said, “Ha, ha, ha. What is this technology good for? Technology is not always good. Look at it, look at how much time you are spending...it doesn't work.” Those are the last words I remember from him—laughing about us trying to use computer projectors.

Fast-forward ten plus years: transparencies are nowhere to be seen, computer projectors are the norm. Most of them are portable—small, miniature things compared to the old ones. Electronic systems killed the paper-based systems. And so I ask myself: Why are there still people using paper based corrective and preventive action systems? Electronic systems are so much better!