1. The development of the transition
Last week, the management representative of the company E-mailed to me that his company had finished the transition assessment with zero nonconformity.
At first, the company had planned to receive the assessment in January, but delayed due to the quarrels between the company and the certification body.

This time, the notorious assessor, Mr.T, mentioned in "A claim to Certification body made by Seibido Company (Nov.4w, 2002)" of the Assessment Scene of this HP, did not come and another assessor who was specially appointed by the body came and made fair assessments, said in the mail.
The mail also said that the new assessor had read the whole content of the claims and he said that he agreed that all the claims the company made were right.

2. The way of the transition preparations
Seibido had a single manual with the description of its entire quality management system, including all the documented management procedures required by ISO9001: 1994, and strictly distinguished management procedures and technical procedures.
This system resulted as only revisions of the quality manual needed. The technical procedures made for 1994 version that no direct relations with the management standards, was left as it was. Very easy preparations for the transition!

3. Process approach for its organization structure
Seibido's main job is bookbinding according to special orders. Lead-time for jobs generally requires within one day. Therefore a worker does reviews of orders on the counter by face-to-face way with his or her customers and then purchase necessary things, copy subscripts, binding copies, inspect finished books and delivery. One person generally does all product realization processes for one customer order. Feedbacks from customers quickly transmit to workers and it makes their morale high.
These workers wrote its technical documents for ISO9001: 1994.
I praised the system as an application of process approach to functional structure (refer to "Confusion due to ambiguous wording of outsourcing, quality objective and process approach" (Jan.5w, 2002) in Basic Knowledge of this HP).

The notorious assessor once said, seeing the system, that workers might be worried to have many job varieties and their responsibilities. It meant he did not have the historical knowledge about importance of devolution and job enrichment, and also the historical understanding of " Involvement people" in the eight quality management principles which are conceptual bases for ISO9001: 2000.