An ISO 9001 Based Framework for Realizing Quality in Small Businessess

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Omega 34 (2006) 231235

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An ISO 9001:2000-based framework for realizing qualityin small businesses

TariqA. Aldowaisan, Ashraf S.Youssef

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, College of Engineering and Petroleum, Kuwait University,

P. O. Box 5969 Safat 13060, Kuwait

Received 22 April 2002; accepted 4 October 2004

Available online 2 December 2004

Abstract

The purpose of ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System (QMS) is to provide businesses with a model to grow

systematically while assuring the quality of their products. The validity of ISO 9001:2000 QMS stems, largely, from the fact

that the best minds worldwide have contributed to its development and maintenance, and the fact that many companies have

reported real business gains because of its implementation. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail to survive due to the

absence or lack of adequate system for managing quality. An obvious recommendation would be to implement ISO 9001:2000

QMS. Nevertheless, small businesses often cite lack of resources and time as the main reasons for not implementing ISO

9001:2000 QMS.

This article proposes a framework for an effective and economical implementation of the ISO 9001:2000 QMS in small

businesses. Unlike the traditional one-shot approach to ISO 9001:2000 implementation, the proposed framework is built on

four premises, utilizing an incremental approach that considers the specific characteristics of small businesses.

2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: ISO 9001:2000 QMS; Small businesses; Framework; Incremental approach

1. ISO 9001 and small businesses

Historically, ISO 9001 Quality Management System

(QMS) has enjoyed more acceptances from larger orga-

nizations that belong mainly to the manufacturing sector.

Over time and with the release of the more generic ISO

9001 version late in the year 2000, the number of non-

manufacturing organizations seeking ISO 9001 certification

gradually but slowly grew.

It is a fact that the majority of organizations worldwide

are non-manufacturing and belong to the category of small

businesses (small businesses, in this paper, is defined as

Corresponding author. Fax: +965 481 6137.

E-mail addresses: [email protected],

[email protected] (T.A. Aldowaisan).

0305-0483/$- see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.omega.2004.10.007

those that employ less than 100 people). These businesses

have generally resisted voluntary adoption of ISO 9001 for

intrinsic and interdependent reasons, such as lack of suf-

ficient personnel and capital resources, lack of time and

skills.

Simply, many small businesses cannot afford to dedicate

or qualify a good number of their employees during and af-ter the ISO 9001 realization project, nor can they finance

the cost of preparation, development and registration. Ef-

forts to convince these businesses to buy into ISO 9001 have

focused on underlining the benefits of registration and find-

ing ways to reduce the cost of consultation/registration [1].

The focus on reducing the consultation/registration cost has

ironically jeopardized the quality of many of the developed

ISO 9001 systems. To reduce cost, some consultants would

cut on development time, force the use of pre-prepared
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232 T.A. Aldowaisan, A.S. Youssef / Omega 34 (2006) 231 235

documentation templates, minimize employeesinvolvement

and training, and suggest registrars who are document audi-

tors rather than quality auditors. The outcome is an afford-

able ISO 9001 certification at the expense of quality.

2. Premises for the proposed framework

Small businesses are different from large businesses in

many fundamental ways [2]:

1. Top management of small businesses typically enjoy

greater control, are more involved in daily operations,

know all employees and their capabilities, know the

whole company operations end-to-end, have high con-

tact and knowledge of customer requirements, and have

good knowledge of the firms working environment of

customers, competitors and suppliers.

2. The scope of small businesses is usually limited interms of products/services, geographic location, mar-

ket/customer base, and technology.

3. Every employee, especiallyat the supervisory/managerial

level, counts. Their departure often causes a great deal

of disruption.

4. There are typically no employees or departments

with the exclusive responsibility for quality activities.

Therefore, quality responsibilities are included among

other responsibilities in the job description of selected

employees.

Watson and Gryna [3] and Rhey and Gryna [4] pointout that small businesses typically lack the resources,

time, and skills to assess quality culture and conduct ex-

tensive market research. The same shortcomings impede

small businesses from developing, implementing, and

maintaining QMS.

In this paper, a framework for realizing quality in small

businesses through ISO 9001:2000 QMS is proposed. The

success of the framework depends largely on four comple-

mentary premises:

1. Do-it-yourselfin order to reduce the total cost (prepara-

tion, development, implementation, maintenance, improve-

ment), to assure the attainment of quality, and to assure the

continual improvement of the QMS. The apparent savingsin doing-it-yourself come from eliminating the consultancy

costs incurred during preparation, development, and imple-

mentation. However, the hidden and more significant sav-

ings come at later stages where the business relies on its own

people to fine-tune and improve the system. A major short-

coming of the many ISO 9001 quality systems is that they

are developed by consultants without real involvement from

the people in the organization. Often, lack of understand-

ing of the system components and the involved development

and improvement tools turns these systems into meaning-

less documentation and records keeping practices that stand

as barriers to business improvement.

2.Assign the top operational manager to be also the qual-

ity representative in order to secure and maintain manage-

ment commitment, to assure complete alignment of quality

performance with business performance, to avoid making

new appointments or creating departments, and to assure to-

tal integration of the QMS with the business management

system. The choice of the top operational managers is due

to the sweeping span of control and authority they usually

enjoy in many small businesses, and to their extensive busi-

ness knowledge and experience. To handle the additional

responsibilities, however, they may very well need to rely

on the support of their office staff especially in perform-

ing the activities of document development, implementation

follow-up, and records keeping.

3. Take your time in order to acquire the necessary knowl-

edge and skills in quality and ISO 9001:2000 QMS. The top

operational manager needs experience and in-depth training

in quality concepts and tools, ISO 9001:2000 requirements,

and auditing techniques. The office staff needs to have a gen-eral training in ISO 9001:2000 QMS and in-depth training

in documentation and documents and records control. Un-

doubtedly, there will be more sweat, longer learning curve,

more errors and frequent updates to the system. It is impor-

tant, however, that the top management stays the course and

maintains persistence to make it work.

4. Do not certify unless it is economically justifi-

able; this often results from customer and/or competitor

pressures. Systems developed under the pressures for

certification sometimes lead to registrar satisfaction rather

than customer satisfaction. Some consultants develop ISO

9001 systems with the registrar, and some times specificregistrar, in mind. The objective of achieving quality rather

than certification helps to minimize the risk of bias that

characterizes self-assessment.

3. Proposed framework

Unlike the traditional one-shot approach to ISO 9001

realization which is typically used by organizations seek-

ing certification, a framework that is based on an incre-

mental approach is recommended for small businesses.

It is believed that the incremental approach, born fromthe above premises, simplifies implementation and sup-

ports the learning process. Figs. 1 and 2 show the one-

shot and incremental approaches to ISO 9001 realization,

respectively.

Identify

QMS

Processes

Design

QMS

Implement

QMS

Maintain &

Improve

Fig. 1. One-shot approach to ISO 9001 realization.


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T.A. Aldowaisan, A.S. Youssef / Omega 34 (2006) 231 235 233

Identify

Key Product

Realization Process

Improve &

Design

Implement

Design Required

System Processes

Single-Process

QMS

Basic

QMS

Multiple-Process

QMS

Learn

Maintain &

Improve

Identify More

Mgt. & Product

Realization Processes

Improve &

Design

Time

Learn

Time

Automate

Fig. 2. Incremental approach to ISO 9001 realization.

As seen from Fig. 2, the proposed framework consists

of three phases. The following paragraphs describe these

phases in detail.

3.1. Single-process QMS

The objective of this phase is to develop a QMS around

a single product realization process. The whole idea hereis to focus all efforts on the most business rewarding pro-

cess and to simplify the task to the extent possible. Since

the goal is not to certify, the business does not have to

quarrel with the system processes at this point (e.g. docu-

ment/records control, auditing, control of nonconformities,

preventive/corrective actions). Moreover, since the system

realizations time is not of primary concern, effort and time

can focus on exploring improvement and automation pos-

sibilities. Consultants eager to cut on cost and get the job

done with minimal time and effort often overlook opportu-

nities for improvement.

The most business rewarding process is one that:

1. generates the highest revenue/profit,

2. has the highest transaction rate, and/or

3. consumes the majority of resources.

Dealing with a small business often does not require a

documented policy manual at this stage. A simple busi-

ness/quality policy statement distributed to all employees

and posted in the offices could be sufficient.

A single documented procedure for the selected business

process needs to be prepared; however, we recommend that

documentation take the form of a graphical process map.

Process mapping or flowcharting helps you visualize and

Description

Responsibility Quality AssuranceActivity

Doer (D) or

Supervisor (S)

Form/Record/

Instruction

Fig. 3. Graphical process map.

present your process in a way that written descriptions can-

not begin to approach [5]. A complementary textual de-

scription may not be needed as processes in small businesses

are usually straightforward and the graphical process map

could alone capture the critical information of activity/logic,

responsibility, and quality assurance as shown in Fig. 3.

Wright gives additional reasons to restrict procedure docu-

mentation to flowcharting even for larger businesses [6]: a

flowchart is simple to audit, contains no padding or unnec-

essary information and is short and to the point. It is also

easy to change, particularly if the system is electronic or

web-based, as it is also important for the design of mean-ingful forms/records and instructions to assure and help im-

prove quality [7]. This graphical process mapping tool was

applied to the training process (mostly a money generating

process) when developing the ISO 9001 QMS for the Of-

fice of Consultation and Career Development (OCCD) in the

College of Engineering and Petroleum at Kuwait University

(Fig. 4).

The process map could be used as the subject for pro-

cess improvement. We have found it to be very useful when

utilized in the context of brainstorming workshops. Another

use of the process map is to communicate requirements for

automation. We highly recommend using automation at this


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234 T.A. Aldowaisan, A.S. Youssef / Omega 34 (2006) 231 235

Setup

Deliver

Evaluate

Feedback &Update Training

Database

S/D: Training Officer

D: Training Coordinator

S: Training Coordinator

D: Trainer


D: Trainee


D: Training Secretary

Training Course OpeningStatement

Course Evaluation Form

Course Evaluation Report

Responsibilities Activities Quality Assurances

Training Manual Self AssessmentCourse ProposalForm

Training Performance AnnualReport

Fig. 4. OCCD training process map.

stage in records keeping and performance measurement. For

example, in the OCCD case study, a database application

with a front-end template was developed as per the Course

Evaluation Form to automate the generation of course eval-

uation reports and general training performance evaluation

as per the Training Performance Annual Report (Fig. 4).

Salot [8] outlines the benefits of automation as follows:

1. Reduce resources required for documentation and recordsmaintenance.

2. Increase the amount and quality of information available

for decision-making.

3. Shorten the process cycle.

4. Increase access to current product and process informa-

tion and metric data.

5. Reduce audit time and the expenditure of company

resources.

From our experience, we believe that small businesses could

get a lot of mileage from capitalizing on the capabilities of

the already available common software applications of MS

Office, especially the MS Access database.It is recommended that the next phase is not extended

unless there is a potential benefit from doing so. Other con-

siderations include attaining an acceptable level of stability

with the current system and a leveling-off of the learning

curve.

3.2. Basic QMS

The objective of this phase is to develop the ISO 9001

system processes completely (document control, records

keeping, corrective and preventive actions, control of non-

conforming products, and internal audit). Some of these pro-

cesses could partially be developed in the previous phase;

e.g. records keeping, document control, and control of non-

conforming products.

The reasons for expanding the single-process QMS into

the basic QMS may include:

1. providing more rigor and order to the process of main-

taining and improving the system (document control,

records keeping, preventive and corrective actions, andinternal audit);

2. ensuring that non-conforming products are properly dis-

posed of (control of non-conforming products); or

3. paving the way to a possible certification as the documen-

tation of these processes is required by ISO 9001:2000

QMS model.

The experience and learning gained by the top operational

manager and office staff from the previous step will prove

to be valuable in carrying out the tasks of this phase more

effectively and efficiently.

We see no real value in developing an elaborate pol-

icy manual unless certification is in mind. It is possible tooverlay policy requirements on the graphical map under the

quality assurance headline. For example, we may state the

audit frequency on the internal audit process map. No need

to detail the audit scope as it is likely to cover the whole

system in small businesses.

3.3. Multiple-process QMS

We may directly arrive to this phase from the single-

process QMS or indirectly after going through the basic

QMS phase. In either case, the objective of this phase is to

include more product realization processes and managerial


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T.A. Aldowaisan, A.S. Youssef / Omega 34 (2006) 231 235 235

processes. The motivation for this phase is to increase the

QMS scope in order to improve quality or possibly seek

certification.Again, we suggest taking the certification route

only if the economics call for it.

In our OCCD example, we first added the product real-

ization process of consulting and later added the testing and

calibration processes. The experience gained from the pre-

vious phases greatly reduces the development time.Another

expansion would include managerial processes such as those

related to business planning and resources provisions (both

physical and human).

We recommend exploring the potential of workflow au-

tomation at this phase to capitalize on the potential integra-

tion of the different product realization processes and their

logical link with the management/planning and measure-

ment processes as per the ISO 9001:2000 QMS model.

4. Conclusion

In this paper, we proposed a framework for quality real-

ization through implementing ISO 9001:2000 QMS based

on an incremental approach that is suitable for small busi-

nesses. The framework is motivated by four complemen-

tary premises to maximize the likelihood of success. These

premises are do-it-yourself, take your time, assign the top

operational manager to also be the quality representative,

and do not seek certification. The main advantage of these

premises is to maximize the likelihood of realizing quality

rather than certificates in small businesses.

The framework consists of three phases:

1. Single-process QMS. In this phase, all efforts including

process improvement and automation are focused on

designing and implementing ISO 9001 for the most re-

warding product realization process.

2. Basic QMS. In this phase, the single-process QMS is ex-

panded to include the minimum number of system pro-

cesses as per ISO 9001:2000 QMS requirements.

3. Multiple-process QMS. In this phase, the system is fur-

ther expanded to include more product realization and

management processes.

The incremental approach of the proposed framework al-

lows small businesses to reap the benefits of ISO 9001:2000

QMS without having to commit many resources or incur

high expenses. Moreover, taking time to implement the re-

quirements of ISO 9001:2000 QMS supports the learning

and appreciation process and, thus, maximizes the system

utility.

References

[1] Callaghan N. ISO 9000 for small companies. Quality Digest,

August 1997; 249.

[2] Berg DL, Harral WM. The small company route to ISO 9000.

Quality Digest, July 1998; 2630.

[3] Watson MA, Gryna FM. Quality culture in small business: four

case studies. Quality Progress, January 2001; 416.

[4] Rhey WL, Gryna FM. Market research for quality in small

business. Quality Progress, January 2001; 318.

[5] Sellers G. Using flowcharts for performance improvement.

Quality Digest, March 1997; 4951.

[6] Wright T. ISO 9001 without tear. Quality Progress, August

2001; 5761.

[7] Myers DJ. Improve forms, improve quality. Quality Digest,August 2000; 434.

[8] Salot Jr SH. A documentation system for the future. Quality

Digest, February 2000; 403.

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An ISO 9001 Based Framework for Realizing Quality in Small Businessess