Life, the Universe,and ISO 9002

[Philip J Wardle <Philip_J_Wardle@domain.elided>]

Hello all,

Graham Nicholson wrote:

> SNG Barratt have just become ISO 9002 accredited (ie quality assured).  I
was
> therefore confident that they would supply only proper parts for my stag.
> Could it be that they considered the stag parts industry to be a
difficult one
> in which to operate since substandard parts seem to be unavoidable if the
full
> range of available parts is to be sold.
>
> Just a thought.

Interesting idea, Graham. As I understand it, ISO 9002 is a subset of ISO
9001,
and this subset will have been chosen as being appropriate to this type of
business.

Roughly speaking, these standards impose two basic requirements on a
supplier,
which are (1) all operations influencing quality shall be under control,
(2) this
control shall be visible. They contain requirements on how a company is to
be
managed on different levels and on different aspects, but most definitely
do not
include requirements on products, ie in this case, the parts S N G Barratt
sell.

What this all means to us, as customers, is that if we buy our Stag parts
from a
source with an ISO 9000 series accreditation there is nothing to stop
sub-standard
parts being sold, but in this case we can expect to be told about it. This
is covered
by Paragraph 4.13 of ISO 9001 which requires that the supplier has
procedures to
ensure that nonconforming products (ie those that don't meet their
specification)
are not used (sold) unintentionally.

So: if a supplier has a batch of sub-standard panels that don't fit without
needing
some modification, its ok for the supplier to sell them if they make it
clear to us,
the customers, that this problem exists. The supplier will know about the
defect
because their ISO 9001 procedures (or ISO 9002 subset) will give visibility
to
the defect within their Quality Management System.

The bottom line is that I personally doubt whether ISO 9002 was connected
with
this decision, I guess it was some sort of commercial issue. Hope this
helps, its
useful to know what this accreditation means.

Regards,
Phil Wardle