Conversion to Six zero system (2002,May.2w)

     This January Company M took ISO9002: 1994 certification. The company makes small metal parts with about thirty employees. In March a management representative of the company phoned me that the company would like to change to a lean ISO9000 system from the present heavy documentation system. The present system has made with advices from an ISO9000 consultant.

Checking the present heavy documents, I asked, " Why did you made such documents? ". Then the management representative answered that the consultant forced them to make such documents as indispensable to respond to ISO9002 requirements. But I found that there are no such requirements (shalls) in ISO9002. This is a typical example that ignorance of " shalls" tends to make heavy and wasteful documentations.

It is my first experience to advice to make a lean ISO9000 system for a company, which has certification. Therefore I can see the heavy documentation at hand.

I found my lean system (called Six zero system) would work for the system as follows.

1. No independent management procedures
 The company has twenty-three independent management procedures and I will absorb them into a single manual.

2. No documents numbers
 The company has scores of documents and they have documents numbers with several digits. I will delete them.

3. No lists for control of distributions of documents
 Quality manual has been distributed to sixteen sections, but I found only one quality manual was enough in such a small company.

4. No column for revision history in each page in Quality manual
 At present there are columns in each page and I will delete them.

5. No QC process chart
 There are about thirty QC process charts. I will change them into quality plans with three pages.

6. No large quality assurance chart
 Now the chart is very large size and so many small letters are written that I cannot read well. I will summarize it in small chart.