Content area
Full text
Thomas J. Crowe: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
James S. Noble: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA
Jeevan S. Machimada: Central Electric Company, Fulton, Missouri, USA
Introduction
The new global business environment is driven by the ability of companies to compete in the international market. Quality is globally recognized as an essential ingredient of competitiveness and has out-scored all other factors. The old definitions of quality, such as "fitness to use" and "conformance to requirements", have been replaced by more customer-focused, customer-based definitions, such as "anticipating and exceeding customer expectations". ISO 9000 has swept the quality arena like wildfire in the six to seven years since its adoption in 1987. Several authors claim that ISO 9000 has become a pseudo requirement, a de facto standard, or the price of admission to the European Community (see Harral, 1992; Kuhn, 1993; Lamprecht, 1993; and Spizizen, 1992). Implementing ISO 9000 is time-consuming and costly. It requires commitment and substantial effort. However, the benefits of registration will outweigh the costs if ISO 9000 standards are implemented and used as intended, i.e. by adhering to all requirements of the standards and continuously monitoring the changes. A survey conducted to assess cost/benefit implications of ISO 9000 registration showed that the average total cost involved in implementing ISO 9000 is about $261,000, whereas the average annual savings alone are about $179,000 (Peach, 1994, ch. 12). Implementing ISO 9000 can be compared with investment in advanced manufacturing technology (AMT) wherein most of the cost and benefit attributes are intangibles and are difficult to quantify. Hence the analysis and justification of investment in ISO 9000 is quite a challenging task. This paper explains the formulation of a methodology for multi-attribute analysis of ISO 9000 registration which involves developing cost and benefit attribute sets and structuring them hierarchically for analysis by the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The methodology has been successfully applied at three Missouri manufacturers.
Overview of ISO 9000 quality system standard
ISO 9000 is a series of generic international standards developed by the International Organization for Standardization for Quality Management and Quality Assurance. ISO 9000 is not a product specification or product standard, but a management system standard that outlines the minimum requirements for...