Page 54 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

40 B u s i n e s s - I n t e g r a t e d Q u a l i t y S y s t e m s A p p r o a c h e s t o Q u a l i t y 41

associated with the underlying process. Unfortunately, if their removal
would degrade the quality of the product or service, then they are Type I
waste, sometimes called Business Value Added, that is necessary given
the current state of the business processes. In many cases, it is beneficial to
change the process to remove the waste.
Lean thinking has been shown to reap dramatic benefits in organiza-
tions. Organizations are able to sustain production levels with half the
manpower, improving quality and reducing cycle times from 50 to 90 per-
cent (Womack and Jones, 1996).
Several of the lean methods are fairly well known in and of themselves.
Just in Time (JIT), for example, has been a buzzword within American
manufacturing since the 1980s. Other well-known methods include Kanban
(Japanese for cards) and 5S. Unfortunately, practitioners often find they are
unable to experience significant advances in any of these areas individu-
ally if they do not embrace the complete principles of Lean. Furthermore,
many of the methods must be undertaken in conjunction with, or after
appreciating results from, rigorous quality improvement. It would perilous
to implement JIT if the underlying processes were not in statistical control:
without statistical control, the process is not stable or predictable, so can-
not be balanced to achieve JIT performance.
Although many of these techniques were initially applied to manufac-
turing applications, they are particularly well suited (and have broad
usage) to address issues in transactional processes within service indus-
tries. Furthermore, they have origins and a strong track record in small
job-shop type environments at Toyota and its suppliers, where produc-
tion was often very low volume and far from mass production levels.

ISO 9000 Series

The best-known system of quality standards is the ISO 9000 series, pub-
lished by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). The
standards were originally published in 1987 and subsequently updated
in 1994, 2000, and 2008. The standard was initially based on the U.S.
Department of Defense Mil-Q-9858, released in 1959.
The use of ISO 9000 is extremely widespread, with over 1.1 million
organizations certified to the standard (as of 2010); 86 percent of the regis-
trations are in Europe and the Far East. It’s likely that the proliferation of
registrations in the Far East results from the recognition in the supply
chain that use of a common standard eliminates the need for multiple
quality systems audits by their various customers. ISO 9000 registration is
achieved by third-party registrar audits; that is, audits are not performed
by customers but by specially trained, independent, third-party auditors.
In the past, many firms had to deal with auditors from many different
customers. Furthermore, the customers usually had their own specific

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