There’s a marauding infestation of adverbs and adjectives that infiltrate the text of quality documents and operating procedures, wreaking havoc wherever they are found.

We all love exceptions. They afford us unfettered permission to break the rules. They are the vehicles we use to get around “things”—whatever those things happen to be.

Lean means doing the most with what you have. It’s efficiency and intelligence. In the modern economy, lean is a fact of life.

Supplier management is one of the most troublesome disciplines within a management system. There’s nothing inherently difficult about it, though. Companies make it difficult by instilling the process with lots of unwieldy bureaucracy.

Do not ever, ever, do anything just to please an auditor. This is quickly becoming one of my new favorite mantras.

After undergoing an often costly and usually painful process to achieve ISO 9001:2000 registration, organizations invariably ask, "What do we do now to ensure that we maintain our registration and gain maximum benefit?" Under ISO 9001:1994, the old answer was fairly

When is faster not better? In our warp-speed, 21st-century lives, getting the task completed on time--or ahead of time or before the competition--has become a goal in itself. We want this project done so we can move on to the next big thing.

Under QS-9000, suppliers relied on the Supplier Quality Requirements Task Force for guidance and direction in dealing with questions related to the standard’s requirements.

Editor’s story update 6/15/2017: This article was originally published on our site in 2004. Although it references ISO 9001:2000 rather than the current version of the quality management standard, Cochran’s 10 questions remain useful for organizations preparing for an audit.

What roles do quality and quality management systems play in a business sector facing revolution? The term isn’t too strong for what’s currently underway in the telecommunications industry.