International Standards
by Amy Zuckerman
New European Approach
Jacques McMillan is determined to
shake up the European quality community.
On the hill overlooking the Grand Place in Brussels lies a maze of streets
and back alleys housing European Union offices.
There are no signs to these offices, just street numbers. Locating 200 Rue
de la Loi, the office of Directorate-General III for Industry, takes some
persistence.
Locating Jacques McMillan proves far simpler. For McMillan, chief of the
Senior Standards Policy Group for DG III, is one of the more accessible
bureaucrats around.
But don't let McMillan's accessibility-let alone his wit and charm-fool
you. A small, energetic man of half-British and half-French descent, McMillan
is arguably one of the most knowledgeable standards experts in the world,
having drafted and implemented in Europe the "Global Approach"
to testing and certification in 1991.
McMillan is also one of the most powerful men in the industrialized world.
Representatives of government standards agencies come courting McMillan.
Multinationals come courting McMillan. Journalists come courting McMillan.
The reason is that McMillan, who began service with the European Commission
in 1974 as a trade-barrier specialist, now heads up the policy-making arm
of EU standards. If McMillan wields a big stick, it's because standards
in Europe are a government matter. The communications McMillan and his standards
group draft may very well become EU directives, EU law.
And he is determined to shake up the European quality community, which he
feels has become far too reliant on the ISO 9000 certification model and
not enough concerned with making European companies truly competitive worldwide.
In the winter of 1994, McMillan and his colleague Antonio Silva Mendes shocked
the ISO 9000 community with a report calling for creation of a new European
quality policy that would diminish the certification (registration in the
United States) aspect of the ISO 9000 process. McMillan, who rarely minces
words, openly condemned the rampant commercialization of ISO 9000.
Throughout the last year, he has continued to criticize any approach to
quality that is quick and dirty, one that goes for a certificate rather
than emphasizing the process. McMillan insists he has no intention of killing
the ISO 9000 standards series. He has no intention, either, of boosting
ISO 9000 certification in Europe. McMillan and Mendes consider the standard
a good quality base, but inadequate as a total quality tool.
On June 6, his group released the final draft of "A European Quality
Promotion Policy." The 50-page report calls for reinforcing the fairly
new European Quality Award, which takes a Malcolm Baldrige approach. If
all goes as planned, national accreditation bodies will operate under EU
jurisdiction. They will no longer operate for profit or compete with each
other. The EU also wants to strengthen a "harmonized European system
for qualification of quality professionals, managers and auditors."
According to the final draft report, which will not be considered for implementation
until the end of this year, the proliferation of ISO 9000 certificates "throughout
the world reveals to us that there is no relation between the number of
certified companies and the competitiveness of the national economies .
. .
"It is clear that if this 'boom' [in ISO 9000 certification] is beneficial
for the distribution and promotion of quality, then it should be equally
apparent that it has also involved some negative aspects linked to an excessively
rigid use of standards, in particular a sometimes exaggerated recourse to
certification . . ."
EU officials recommend the "use of these standards as a reference frame
for the quality systems (and did not make the certification of the quality
system obligatory, as was misinterpreted by many)."
What does this report mean for the future of ISO 9000? McMillan is far too
cagey to make any definite prognostications. He says he's not even certain
whether his standards group will push for an EC vote or let the report stand
as a recommendation. The first sign of any movement on this subject will
be in November when the European Council of Industries meets. McMillan expects
the report will be on the agenda for discussion, not action.
"The debate taking place now will shape the future," predicts
McMillan. "We're getting favorable feedback from industry, member states,
national administrations and most who've read the paper."
As for ISO 9000, McMillan says: "In practical terms, we can't do anything
about it. All we're trying to do in the marketplace is send the message
to think of quality first. We can't tell the certifiers to go home, throw
their pens away and change jobs.
"But we're trying to pass down the message to certifiers, manufacturers
and customers repeatedly asking for ISO 9000 when they don't need it to
think twice. If someone has earned a certificate in six months, they're
thinking wrong. We're not saying certification is bad, but it's not necessarily
indispensable in certain cases."
Whether words alone will stop the ISO 9000 juggernaut still remains to be
seen. In the meantime, the report doesn't address the issue of EU directives
that mandate European ISO 9000 equivalents for manufacturers of telecommunications
equipment, pacemakers and other industries that McMillan has still to identify.
For example, the directive regarding "terminal equipment" relating
to telecommunications was issued on April 29, 1991, and mandates EN 29001
and EN 29002 (ISO 9000 equivalents) as part of the requirement for passing
an "EC-type examination." Without the appropriate certificates
or proof of conformity with these standards, the directive allows member
EU states to "take all appropriate measures to withdraw such products
from the market, or to prohibit or restrict their being placed on the market."
U.S.-based electronics companies want to see McMillan go beyond criticizing
ISO 9000 certification. They want McMillan and the EC to lift the directives
that tacitly make the standards law in Europe. And if the standards are
law, as these companies insist, then ISO 9000 can be considered a possible
European trade barrier.
"We've never forced anyone into doing ISO 9000," insists McMillan.
"That's rubbish. They have a choice of ISO 9000 or product certification
in most cases. It's rare that the Council forces ISO 9000 as a mandate."
Even so, the EU directives call for companies doing business in Europe to
have in place a quality system that meets or exceeds the ISO 9000 requirements.
Outside of Germany, there reportedly is no guidance document outlining how
a manufacturer's declaration would substitute for ISO 9000 certification.
That means it's pretty much ISO 9000 in Europe for some industries or don't
do business there.
Never one to be deterred, let alone back down in the face of confrontation,
McMillan concedes that "there may not be a market option in some cases.
I'm not too perturbed about that. If in some cases we've overshot the mark,
we'll rethink it."
McMillan, who clearly gets a kick out of tweaking noses or even pushing
noses out of joint, doesn't promise a timetable for the rethinking process.
Tune in some time in the next few months for continued debate on this topic.
About the author . . .
Amy Zuckerman is author of ISO 9000 Made Easy: A Cost-Saving Guide to Documentation
and Registration (AMACOM Books). She operates an international market research
company based in Amherst, Massachusetts. S.A. Vlamis helped research this
column.