The quest for ISO certification

The leaders of the United States government are advocating a new way of doing business. The Department of Defense (DOD) budget has been declining since the Reagan era. With this decline comes the realization that private industry and the government can no longer afford the detailed government funded standards and related management bureaucracy. The value added by these standards is not visible to the higher levels of the DOD. In an economy turning global, an international (non-government sponsored) standard, such as ISO 9000 (ISO), has high appeal. ISO will not do away with standards; it is one. ISO provides uniformity and standardization via training of registrars, certification of processes, and periodic audits for compliance to requirements. A more consistent set of audit findings will allow managers to, focus on globally perceived issues. Management actions will be more easily prioritized, and allow them to deal with product-specific, functionally related, quality issues; not systemic organizational issues.