Business Management - Productivity/Process Improvement

Editor's Note: This is the 13th installment in the monthly series on The F.P. Horak Co., a Bay City, MI-based printing firm pursuing ISO 9002 registration. ISO expects certain things from compliant companies. One hundred and thirty certain things, to be exact. That's the number you get when you add up all of the elements and subclauses that an ISO-registered organization must follow. Some people refer to the 138 things as directives. Kevin Krzyminski, quality assurance manager at The F.P. Horak Co., prefers to call them "shalls"—as in "You shall do this" and "You shall do that." Auditors make sure that companies questing for ISO certification

You're bowling. You heave the ball. It's halfway down the lane when the lights go out. You hear the pins rattling, but how many went down? Similarly, many printing companies are working in the dark. The folks see and hear the work going on everyday. They roll the balls down the alley, but then the lights go out. They never get to see the results. Why? Data paranoia. How long would you continue to bowl if you never saw pins fall? Never knew your score? You just wouldn't have the incentive. So how do we expect people to have incentive for the work they do? Unreasonable

Editor's Note: This is the 12th installment in the monthly series on The F.P. Horak Co., a Bay City, MI-based printing firm pursuing ISO 9002 registration. Two pieces of free advice. First, always schedule a pre-assessment before attempting an actual ISO audit. Second, never schedule a pre-assessment immediately after an internal audit. These words of wisdom come courtesy of Kevin Krzyminski, The F.P. Horak Co.'s quality assurance manager. He speaks from experience. Horak's pre-assessment, a mock audit conducted by a registrar representative, took place a mere two days after management review—the meeting where Horak's Quality Council went over the outcome of the internal audit. To give the internal