On March 28, 2013, the world lost a person whom many consider to be a major contributor to the world of industrial statistics: George E. P. Box. Relatively unknown outside the world of statistics, Box was certainly very well known by those who have studied or practiced industrial statistics.

In July 2008, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament agreed to provide a legal framework that creates one monopoly in each member state of the European Union (EU) for the provision of accreditation services across Europe.

I recently bought myself an almost-latest-version smartphone. It was intended to celebrate my 62nd birthday; replace my present, obsolete portable phone; and be reliable and not too expensive.

I wrote what follows with ISO 9001 and its derivatives in mind because these are the standards I’m most familiar with. Yet even before writing, I realized, at least from my experience, that the following points can be shared by most management system consultancy projects. Especially when the companies involved are small- to medium-sized, and the top management is either the company founder or someone from that family.

Deciding how to control your documents can be difficult. ISO 9001, the quality management system (QMS) standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), requires you maintain accurate and up-to-date procedures, but doesn’t give a lot of guidance on how to get there. Between the requirements and the implementation lie grey areas and confusion. Let’s take a look at the difference between what is required and what is a good idea in the world of document review.

These days quality professionals have shifted away from actually writing procedures to helping others develop documentation to describe the businesses they are in. Although I live in hope, I still see many poor attempts at “procedures”—or at least failures in their facilitation.

The production and provision of any product or service requires many activities to be performed. The pattern of activities that a firm adopts to create and deliver value to customers is commonly called the value chain (or value stream). A key issue in competitive strategy is how to organize a value chain to provide superior value to customers and create price and cost differentials from rivals.

People often ask for examples of benefits from implementing ISO 9001-compliant quality management systems (QMS). Such examples are often difficult to provide, at least in terms of immediate results. The reason is that the effects of ISO 9001 and its automotive counterpart ISO/TS 16949 are largely preventive, which means they are most conspicuous through their absence.

Back in the early 1990s, there was a saying, loudly heralded by one global registrar: “Certify your company, and the export markets will open their doors to it.” Well, the actual wording was a bit more rude, to get the message across to small companies.

To remain the valuable business system that it currently is, ISO 9001 needs to continue to evolve, ensuring that organizations of all sizes, complexities, and locations see a clear connection between their strategic objectives and their quality management system (QMS). It is not just about meeting the requirements of a standard to get certification; ISO 9001 must be embedded in everything that the organization does.