What is quality management? I have a simple, straightforward answer to this question. Quality management means meeting the requirements of all parties who have an interest in your business, with the most important one being yourself. Other interested parties include stakeholders who have invested in your business, your customers, business partners, and regulators.
I emphasized ‘yourself’ because the requirements that matter for driving your business successfully are internal, external, and regulatory. When I talk about internal requirements, I mean the policies you define to govern your business. The first and most important requirements are those set by yourself, and you need to continually monitor the degree of your loyalty to these self-defined principles.
ISO standards are the result of best practices that ISO member states bring together in one place to help others learn from their experience and avoid reinventing the wheel. It’s not dedicated to quality management in the manufacturing sector, as many assume. ISO’s role is managing knowledge through the flow of best practices already undertaken by its member states. These best practices are available for all industries and sectors.
ISO standards are based on best practices that serve as a baseline for adding structure to your business operations. Structuring means conducting your day-to-day operations by following predetermined processes. However, as I said, you need to see it as a baseline, and there is no doubt it should be tailored to the context of your business.
ISO standards generally fall into two categories: specification standards and management systems. The word ‘system’ needs to be emphasized here. What is a management system or a systematic approach in management? I have another simple, straightforward answer. A systematic approach in management means operating according to predefined processes. In other words, when you have a system implemented in your business, it doesn’t matter who, what, or when—everyone must follow the predefined processes at all times. You may ask, ‘What about specific situations?’ Even in specific situations, people will follow the predefined processes designed for those particular scenarios.
Usually, businesses are already operational when leadership decides to implement management systems for structuring. What I want to emphasize here is that you need to run your business through management systems from the start.
ISO issues management system standards in the form of standard families. A standard family is a series of documents that include ‘requirements’ and ‘guidelines.’ Requirement standards are those that organizations must adhere to when seeking conformity certifications, while guidelines provide more detailed, practical information in support of the requirement standards. The result of implementing ISO requirement standards is a series of processes that need to be followed within a specific business boundary, which is designated for certification of conformity.
ISO requirement standards follow a risk-based approach. In simple terms, this means you need to continually monitor your business from the perspective of threats and opportunities. You continually improve your business processes by controlling risk, which means minimizing the probability or impact of threats to an acceptable level, and maximizing your exposure to opportunities up to an acceptable level.
ISO standards are generic, meaning they are applicable to all types of organizations in different industries and sectors. ISO standards need to be implemented according to the business context, and different business contexts result in different implementations of ISO standards.
When we talk about ISO management systems like the ISO 44000 family of standards, we are referring to a generic system for collaborative business relationships. The context of the application defines the implementation of this standard. It can be implemented in the form of a joint venture between two small businesses to design, develop, or market a consumer product, or as a public-private partnership between a government agency and a business enterprise to build and operate an airport.
There are specification standards, many of which exist for the tech sector, that provide generic specifications for technical concepts. For example, ISO 14882 specifies the C++ programming language in a generic way. In this example, ISO 14882 is a generic specification of a programming language that needs to be implemented in different contexts to be usable. For instance, MS Visual C++ is Microsoft’s implementation of the standard, optimized for Windows-based development and the x86 platform. Another implementation is IBM XL C/C++, which is optimized for the IBM PowerPC and AIX platform.
What is important is consistency. Whether you are forming a joint venture between two small businesses or structuring a public-private partnership to build and operate an airport, you need to follow the best practices outlined by the standard.
This is what knowledge is. When you gain knowledge in defining and structuring collaborative business relationships, you understand how to apply the best practices provided by the standard to the respective context.
ISO develops and distributes knowledge by maintaining the flow of best practices among its member states around the world. When different implementations are done consistently according to the standard’s best practices, minimal effort is required to maintain them. People with knowledge gained from these best practices can maintain implementations, even if they were not the ones who originally implemented them.
Another important point is the ownership of the implementations. What you build on ISO standards as an implementation is your own property. ISO standards are available to everyone, and if you create an innovative implementation of a standard, you can own, maintain, and monetize it.