Inc. magazine has a very thorough article on the process, pros and cons of ISO certification. The article asks whether or not the high cost and difficulty of obtaining certification are worth it. Quote:
Three years ago, ISO’s own journal, ISO Management Systems, published a study that tracked the effects of ISO 9000 certification on public companies over a 10-year period. The authors concluded that firms that were certified tended to do better than firms that were not. But they also wrote that certification “is more often a necessary condition to maintain current [financial] performance rather than a sure-fire way to improve performance.” A 2002 study by the journal Total Quality Management was more pointed, finding that “ISO 9000 certification has a very limited impact on financial performance, as measured by return on assets; however, this effect dissipates quickly over time.”
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If an organization “implements ISO 9001″ to obtain a certificate then it will obtain less value than a company that uses the standard to improve the system it uses to run the business.
The INC article focused on the woes of the former organizations and did not report on the successes of the latter.
Any company can use ISO 9001 to develop its process-based management system so it could be used to drive its core process to add value faster while the system enables employees to prevent loss sooner. The core process, by the way, translates the needs of customers into cash in the bank.
Our website has described how our clients do this since 1997 and this is based on the hardcopy guidance we have published since 1987.