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Mmmhhhhh.....You are making me think over a few important things.
You are right, for sure, regarding two topics:
1) A real QC&A system MUST be checked by an external and unbiased
supervisor. This is the only way to check the whole QC&A system design.
2) ISO9000 is an extremely good starting point, thanks to its carefull
design and its wide and deep testing by many companies.
On the other hand, I remain skeptics about two aspects:
1) As a consumer, I do not trust ISO9000 certified products at all.
2) ISO9000 still seems to me too complex and bureoucratic.
Regarding the costs, a few Italian consulting firms are offering they
ISO9000-implementation services for prices that go from 20.000 to 60.000 US$
per year (for a minimum of 2 or 3 years, in some case). They say that around
a third of this cost is related to the auditing and unavoidable. If this is
true, I can just say that, most likely, we would spend less by accepting a
secondary market position respect our certified competitors (if any).
In any case, thanks for you interesting comments regard this topic.
