newsdigest
by Dirk Dusharme and Neville Samuels
Justice Department Hedges on ISO 14001
Commerce Secretary Dies in Plane Crash
California State Parks Listen to Customers
Team Tackles Turnaround Time
ISO 9002 Increases Competitiveness
Teaming Up for Success
CE Marking: Have You Heard?
Better Service Through Technology
Top 10 QS-9000 Noncompliances
DeSTRESS Your Employees
Justice Department
Hedges on ISO 14001
Any hopes companies might have regarding ISO 14001's potential to protect
them from serious penalties arising from regulatory noncompliance may recently
have been dashed. According to a letter from the Department of Justice to
the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Enforcement and Compliance
Assurance, the DOJ is reluctant to allow ISO 14001 to have any influence
on U.S. regulatory or enforcement actions.
The DOJ's concerns with ISO 14001 as a regulatory instrument seem to fall
within two areas. The first concern is the standard's intent, points out
Lois Schiffer, assistant attorney general for DOJ's Environment and Natural
Resources Division, in her letter to OECA Assistant Administrator Steve
Herman.
"ISO 14001 contains management system or process standards, not performance
standards," Schiffer writes. "This distinction is critical. ISO
14001 sets forth a process for achieving environmental goals. [But] it will
not guarantee that a company complies with the standards that DOJ enforces."
Schiffer also points out that DOJ policies already provide leniency toward
companies that "expend significant effort to ensure their compliance
with environmental laws and regulations" and who work with regulators
to correct deficiencies. ISO 14001, on the other hand, "does not appear
to set or require compliance with any particular environmental performance
standards," she writes.
Although Schiffer questioned ISO 14001's utility for domestic regulatory
or enforcement purposes, a recently enacted EPA policy eliminates or greatly
reduces penalties for companies that voluntarily identify, disclose and
promptly correct violations when the violations are discovered as the result
of an environmental audit or the use of a compliance system. Schiffer was
unavailable for comment, but an OECA official acknowledged that ISO 14001
would be relevant in this regard.
It remains to be seen how ISO 14001 will fit into the entire scheme of regulatory
compliance, enforcement and penalties. Even Schiffer points out that the
DOJ has not ruled out ISO 14001's role but will keep an eye on the standard's
development and use. If the standard is released and implemented, both the
EPA and DOJ will evaluate the environmental performance of ISO 14001-certified
companies. Based on that data, the agencies can determine whether ISO 14001
has any regulatory or enforcement application, says Schiffer.
Commerce Secretary
Dies in Plane Crash
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, heralded by many as one of the most dynamic
leaders the Commerce Department has seen in some time, died April 3 when
a plane carrying Brown and 34 other passengers crashed into a hillside in
Dubrovnik, Croatia. As the 30th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Brown was responsible
for several notable accomplishments.
He led the creation of the National Export Strategy, which led to more than
$80 billion in foreign deals for U.S. business. Brown also championed the
role of civilian technology as a critical ingredient of U.S. success in
the global marketplace by entering into more than 220 public-private partnerships
through the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Advanced Technology
Program.
An avid supporter of NIST programs, Brown recently pushed for the expansion
of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program.
"One of the last things he did was to meet with the foundation directors
and make a specific request to initiate establishment of an endowment for
education and health-care categories," explains Harry Hertz, the program's
director.
Brown's death, although a blow to NIST, will probably have no impact on
existing programs.
"I don't foresee that there will be any changes," says a NIST
spokesman. "Unfortunately, we lost a champion of those programs, and
we'll have to step in and continue his belief and vision for what NIST means
to the U.S. economy."
California State Parks Listen to Customers
Nearly 20 million visitors each year enjoy California's state parks and
its miles of coastline, acres of redwood trees and scores of lakes and historical
sites. Now there's an added bonus: The California Department of Parks and
Recreation is actively using quality-management tools to improve the efficiency
and service quality of the California State Parks system.
Customer-satisfaction surveys form a key component of DPR's quality process,
says Pete Williams, assistant director of quality management for California
State Parks. DPR collects about 9,000 surveys per quarter from 268 state
parks.
"The statewide visitor survey has been the most important data-collection
strategy we have ever undertaken," explains Williams. "Before
this, everything was based on what people thought a problem was."
At the local level, the data enables parks to fine-tune service strategies.
For instance, based on feedback from concerned visitors, park officials
began collecting data on boating and jet-ski accidents at Lake Perris in
Southern California. Between 1989 and 1994, there were 480 accidents, with
the majority of accidents involving drivers between 23 and 33 years old.
Before the survey, rangers believed that the accidents were alcohol-related
and were ready to ban alcohol at the lake, says Williams. The data revealed
that the major cause of accidents was inexperienced operators. So park officials
shifted their focus to boating safety education. Although they've only had
one summer to monitor the program's impact, they have seen a 31-percent
drop in vessel accidents from summer 1994 compared to summer 1995.
Statewide improvements resulting from DPR's quality process helped the department
cut the percentage the state's general fund supports its operating budget
by half (from 53 percent to 27 percent). DPR recently received a bronze-level
award in California's Baldrige-based Eureka Award for Quality and Service
Excellence.
Team Tackles Turnaround Time
Root causes come in many forms. As one problem-solving team discovered,
the root cause may be who holds the purse strings.
At San Jose Medical Center in California, emergency room personnel complained
about the poor turnaround time in getting X-ray reports back to emergency
room
physicians; on average, the turnaround time was 33 hours.
"It was a matter of risk management," says Dr. Mary McDevitt,
a medical director at the center. "The doctor on call is supposed to
notify the patient of the X-ray results. If a patient is sent home and then
the doctor discovers a fracture from the X-rays, that patient should be
called as soon as possible."
The medical center assembled a team, which included emergency room personnel,
to look at the process for creating and routing radiology reports. They
discovered an unnecessary step-transcribed radiology reports had to go through
the medical records office. The reason? That office held the budget for
outside transcription services and reviewed every radiology report for correctness
before handing it off to the radiology department, which also reviewed the
report and had it signed by a physician. The time spent in the redundant
step of running the report through medical records was the biggest bottleneck,
says McDevitt.
During a weekend-long meeting attended by directors of medical records and
radiology, McDevitt pointed out the problem. When the director of radiology
saw where the bottleneck was, the budgeted funds were transferred from medical
records to radiology. The center reduced turnaround time for radiology reports
from an average of 33 hours to an average of 18 hours.
Problem solved.
ISO 9002 Increases Competitiveness
In recent years, partly in response to outcry over escalating health-care
costs and partly due to the specter of some form of nationalized health
care, competition has increased significantly among managed health-care
providers. To stand out from their competition, one managed-care provider
turned to ISO 9002 registration.
"We have long been proponents of the philosophy that you must manage
quality first," says Marlene Travis, president and chief operating
officer of Health Risk Management, an international health-care management
company. "Getting ISO 9002 certification on our claims group externally
and internally ratified what we believe is the key to effective health-care
management-the management of information. You can't manage quality unless
you can manage the information related to it."
Travis stresses that the success of a quality management program for a company
such as HRM depends heavily on the ability to handle client information
related to claims management, claims payment, payment management and benefits
coordination. ISO 9002 certification proves that the company has the documentation
and information-handling infrastructure in place to deal with these issues,
she adds.
Assisted by QNET training and consulting, HRM's Claim Management subsidiary
received ISO 9002 certification in January.
Teaming Up
for Success
More and more administrative professionals are "teaming up" with
managers, according to a recent survey by OfficeTeam, the nation's leading
staffing service.
Seventy-two percent of executives said administrative assistants are working
with them on a more collaborative basis than they did five years ago.
Managers were asked, "Which of the following functions are administrative
assistants or secretaries more likely to be involved with today than five
years ago?"
The responses: work collectively with managers (72%), contribute important
operational ideas and solutions (17%), serve on policy-making committees
or task forces (8%), not sure (3%).
CE Marking:
Have You Heard?
Although the conformance deadline has come and gone for several product
categories, a surprising number of companies that sell products in Europe
have still not heard about CE Marking, according to industry sources.
CE Marking certifies that a product conforms to European Union health, safety
and environmental requirements. It will eventually be required on two-thirds
of all U.S. exports to Europe, according to the International Trade Association.
It's not too surprising that many U.S. companies are unaware of the EU requirements.
A quick search of a large on-line business database showed only 64 references
to articles on the subject, compared to more than 800 references to ISO
9000.
Unlike ISO 9000, the risk for noncompliance is far worse than simply losing
clients. Products that are not in compliance may be restricted, prohibited
from sale or even withdrawn from the market, according to registrar TUV
Rheinland.
A recent article in Approval magazine, which covers CE Marking issues, even
suggests that companies snitch on their competitors. Because CE Marking
is the law in Europe, a call to the right European officials could result
in a competitors' products being banned.
The upshot of all this? If you are a manufacturer of products that are sold
in Europe, you better read up on CE Marking.
For more information, contact the International Trade Association, Office
of European Union and Regional Affairs, at (202) 482-5276.
Better
Service
Through Technology
The key to good customer service is timely feedback on customer satisfaction.
For Great Plains Software, technology plays a vital role in providing feedback.
GPS, a leading developer of accounting and financial management software,
monitors service quality using an automated faxing system that faxes surveys
to randomly selected customers who used GPS's services that day. And because
customer satisfaction is factored into employee recognition, each GPS employee
carries a customer-satisfaction score based on the surveys. They continually
try to improve their score.
The secret to utilizing technology is to design it into the system, says
Dennis Erdle, vice president of professional services at Great Plains Software.
"We have implemented technology systems that have been developed from
the ground up specifically to serve customers, rather than trying to retrofit
a system," says Erdle.
Erdle uses the company's guaranteed response time as a further example of
integrated technology. GPS guarantees customers a return call within 30
minutes or an hour. Using a custom-designed call-tracking system, GPS tracks
the guaranteed response times to ensure these times are met.
The hard work and technology has paid off. The Fargo, North Dakota, company
recently received the Grand National Award in Inc./MCI's Positive Performer
Awards.
Top 10 QS-9000 Noncompliances
Entela Inc. Lead Assessor Robert Bakker has pinpointed the top 10 QS-9000
noncompliances:
#10: Element 4.3 Contract Review
Contracts are not amended or updated to reflect contract changes.
#9: Element 4.1.3 Management Review
Company fails to document management review of QS-9000.
#8: Element 4.4 Design Control
Documentation doesn't keep up with design revisions.
#7: Element 4.18 Training
Job descriptions don't match staff credentials, company fails to evaluate
training effectiveness, and new staff are not properly trained.
#6: Element 4.13 Control of Nonconforming Product
Company fails to segregate "bad" product.
#5: Element 4.6 Purchasing
Company doesn't maintain an approved supplier list or doesn't track subcontractors'
performance.
#4: Element 4.9 Process Control
Staff deviates from approved process control.
#3: Element 4.10.2 Receiving Inspection and Testing
Company fails to use accepted practices to receive and inspect goods.
#2: Element 4.11.3 Inspection, Measurement and Test Equipment Records
Bad geometry makes bad products. Can you prove your gages give you good
numbers?
#1: Element 4.5 Document and Data Control
This is No. 1 due to the amount of documentation necessary for QS-9000 compliance.
Bakker prescribes the following measures to minimize noncompliances:
Use internal, cross-sectional audit
teams for objective perspectives.
Develop a process for efficient document
revisions.
Opt for a preassessment.
Manage your calibration program.
Let staff record their procedures.
Do what you say, say what you do.
DeSTRESS
Your Employees
Worker anxiety and stress is taking its toll on performance and productivity
in the workplace. An increase in absenteeism due to stress-related illnesses,
such as back pain, migraines, eating disorders, sleep disorders and high
blood pressure; and an increase in accidents due to fatigue and overexertion
all have negative impact on performance and productivity, according to the
American Society for Training and Development. More than $150 million in
stress-related claims are filed each year in the United States, says the
ASTD.
But there is hope. Here are eight basic principles that the ASTD suggests
companies heed to help workers overstressed by overwork.
Be flexible. Give employees some say
in organizing and carrying out their work.
Teach people to negotiate alternatives.
Instruct employees to communicate information about their current workloads.
Set realistic deadlines.
Where legal, pay back overtime with
time, not money.
Encourage your employees to exercise
regularly.
Offer nutritious food snacks during
breaks. Ultimately, junk food can make people tired and irritable.
Do business during business hours.
Lighten up. Every situation has a potentially
humorous side-if you look for it.
