There is a big difference between what a company does to get a customer off its back (obtaining a certificate of registration to ISO 9001 because the customer requires it contractually) and what a company does to produce its products and/or services consistently so as to meet customer requirements and the promised capabilities the company actually sells its products/services as having and the improves its processes so as to reduce waste and increase efficiency.

As for what your quality manual and procedures need to provide to your organization in order to satisfy a registrar's auditors, I am equally interested in seeing what everyone else has to say. What I will do to get the discussion started is explain what your facility can exclude from its QMS scope IF YOUR ORGANIZATION DOESN'T ENGAGE IN THESE ACTIVITIES.

Clause 1.2, Application, permits an organization to exclude from the QMS scope--the description of what your organization's procedures cover--any of the processes required in Section 7, Product Realization, when the organization does not engage in those activities. For a manufacturer, the reality is that the only clauses of Section 7 that logically could be exclude because they do not apply to the organization's processes are:
Clause 7.3, Design and Development
Clause 7.4, Purchasing
Subclause 7.5.3, Production and Service Provision--Indentification and Traceability
Subclause 7.5.4, Customer Property
Subclause 7.5.5, Control of Monitoring and Measuring Devices

For each of these clauses/subclauses, a manufacturer's ISO 9001:2000 implementation team (and its internal auditors) need to ask, "Does our facility do this?" If the answer is "Yes", then the processes your facility presently uses need to be compared with what ISO 9001:2000 requires and adjusted (or created, if missing) to ensure effective conformance with the requirements. If the answer is "No", then the team needs to verify that your facility doesn't do these things because they are not practical (your company doesn't have design and development processes because it does not design and develop product or services) or your customers do not require them (e.g., identification and traceability).

In its simplest form, ISO 9001:2000 requires that you:
Say what you do.
Do what you say you do.
Prove it.
Look for opportunities to improve how you do what you do (continual improvement of the effectiveness of the QMS).

It would appear that the one clause that does not apply to your facility may be design and development. However, just because your facility does not have a design department does mean there may not be activities that fit in with what ISO 9001:2000 considers design and development. If your facility manufactures components for customers exactly to specification, without any modification of the product because the specification is exact, then Clause 7.3 does not apply. If modifications do occur to the product that require you to inspect and test the product to ensure it still meets tolerances, run-at rates, etc., then Clause 7.3 or parts of it may apply.

Now, I would like to hear what others have to say about this based on both their reading of ISO 9001:2000 and their experiences with or what they've heard about implementation efforts.

What does the quality manual have to state when it comes to what is included in and excluded from the QMS?