Two questions:
1) In correcting for Seasonality ("Making Sense of Data", pg. 301) the seasonal factors are arbitrarily corrected to ensure the sum of the factors equals the number of seasons. In practice, I have not seen the sum of factors come quite as close as .01 to the number of seasons. Is there a way to assign the delta more appropriately?
2) Are there other bias correction methods that work for non-cyclical events?
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qdigest 2/12/2001
Until November 2000, if your organization didn't engage in design and development activities but only manufactured garments based on designs provided by customers, I would have recommended the use of ISO 9002:1994, which does not include design requirements.
However, ISO 9002:1994 is now being replaced by ISO 9001:2000, which would allow your organization to establish its quality management system (QMS) scope to include only what your organization does (that is, excluding design and development processes).
There is no requirement that your organization has to achieve registration (get certified) to ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 9002:1994 in order to use it. Registration is normally done only because your organization thinks having third-party audits and having third-party verification of your QMS is a value-added activity, a customer requires it, the industry association you belong to requires members to register and/or your organization thinks registration will have competitive advantages. It is also believed that there are far many more companies and organizations using QMSs that conform to the requirements of ISO 9001/2/3:1994 than are registered to one of the three, and they have chosen not to register because they believe the costs of registration are greater than the benefits they would obtain.
So, your organization can definitely implement a QMS that meets the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 (or ISO 9001/2/3:1994) on its own. There are many books and reference guides available to help you. I recommend the following because of my knowledge of them, not because they are the only ones or the best:
1. ISO 9001:2000--if you don't have a copy of the latest edition of the QMS requirements, purchase this from ASQ (1-800-248-1946) or another source and read it. The language is easier to understand and the requirements are easier to apply than the 1994 editions.
2. ISO 9000:2000 (Fundamentals and vocabulary) and ISO 9004:2000 (Guidelines for Performance Improvement)--these were published along with ISO 9001:2000. ISO 9000:2000 provides definitions for the terminology in the other two standards and provides guidance on the concepts in ISO 9001/4. ISO 9004:2000 is not an implementation guideline for ISO 9001:2000, but it provides guidance on all the things an organization should consider in implementing a comprehensive QMS and improving an existing QMS. You don't have to implement a comprehensive QMS, but it helps to know you have considered everything that might help your organization and that might benefit your operations.
3. "ISO 9000:2000 In a Nutshell" by Jeanne Ketola and Kathy Roberts and "Analysis of ISO 9001:2000...With Guidance References" by INFORM. I don't believe it promoting products in forums, but the book by Ketola and Roberts walks you through the changes in ISO 9001:2000 from ISO 9001:1994 and provides guidance on what it all means, while the Analysis, which was done by me, is a subclause-by-subclause summarization of the requirements in ISO 9001:2000 with reference to the guidance that ISO 9000:2000 and ISO 9004:2000 offers on each subclause of ISO 9001.
As I've noted, there are many books and guides you can choose from, and I offer these two only as examples since you may need a different type or level of guidance.
As for the cost of implementation and registration, the implementation costs are usually the largest expense because you need to commit staff to the development of the QMS, train employees on how to use the new system
and then periodically audit the system to make sure it is effective--not to mention the time spent on management review and doing corrective and preventive action.
Many organizations choose to use outside sources for training and for help in implementing systems, but you need to determine how close your existing QMS is to meeting all the requirements of the standard before deciding what needs to be done and whether you need outside help--and what those changes will cost. Certainly, having standard operating procedures through an ISO 9001-based QMS can pay for itself very quickly, so it is really a matter of deciding how much your organization is willing to invest to obtain those returns on investment.