Quality Certification and Issue of Debate
ISO 9002 distinction means preferred supplier status, higher standards, and better process controls-but is it worth the cost?
By Lisa Leland, Associate Editor -- graphic arts online, 12/1/2000
As the printing industry continues its shift from a craft to a manufacturing environment, it is intrinsic that printers have the ability to document and demonstrate to clients set formal procedures that prove quality.
To this end, organizations among many industries undergo ISO certification, a standardization approach to manufacturing quality control. Derived from the Greek word isos, meaning "equal," ISO was conceived in Geneva, Switzerland 50 years ago by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 130 countries (one from each nation).
ISO 9002, the requirement for the printing industry, is a quality assurance model for production, equipment calibration, and servicing at a manufacturing facility. As opposed to being a product standard, it is a management system standard that details what an organization must do to manage processes that affect quality.
Pervasive resistance
While advocates of ISO 9002 certification tout its top advantage as ensuring that all employees follow consistent processes to bring undeviating discipline and efficiencies to the entire print cycle, the vast majority of printers resist applying, eschewing ISO as too complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.
"Without a doubt, it [certification] is very hard to do and requires an enormous commitment from top management all the way through to your delivery driver," testifies David Moss, vice president of business development for PBM Graphics, Inc., a Durham, N.C.-based commercial printer that earned ISO 9002 certification last year for all four of its plants. The 900-employee firm was mandated to pursue ISO by one of its largest customers.
"At first we were very concerned that we didn't have the skills to pull it off, but once we took it seriously, we knocked it off in eight months, and that was for all four of our facilities," says Moss. "It has improved our processes and the quality of our finished work, and made us a better supplier to our customer base.
"There is also a marketing sizzle that comes with the elevated credibility," Moss adds. "When you figure that only 1% of all printers in the country are ISO-affiliated, it singles us out as being among a handful of firms that really show their truest colors. Remember, ISO is a requirement overseas, and as the printing industry becomes a lot more global, this type of certification will be expected of U.S. printers that want to operate in an international arena."
Proactive vs. reactive approach
ISO 14001 encourages a proactive rather than reactive approach to environmental practices at manufacturing sites. The program helps manufacturers reduce the cost of waste management by doing the following: saving in consumption of energy and materials; lowering distribution costs; improving corporate image among regulators, customers, and the public; and providing a framework for continuous improvement in environmental performance.
Each certified company's procedures must be in line with the spirit and intent behind ISO standards, as the process is documented and registered. After certification, a manager in charge of ISO compliance must attend a class and be re-certified every six months.
Rules on which all can agree
While the ISO process allows procedures to be created by firms themselves, with employees being given the right to judge what is important to their plant, independent ISO auditors police the process and evaluate the common sense of how a firm determines what's important to produce a quality product.
Pictorial Offset, a $50 million web and sheetfed printer based in Carlstadt, N.J., is recognized as the first printing company in the world to obtain dual certification in ISO 9002 and ISO 14001. The 13-month process, completed in early 1999 at a cost of $500,000 and 15,000 man-hours, was aimed as much at taking out costly waste as it was for gaining status for world-class standards and practices, says managing partner Lester Samuels.
"From a client-side look, pursuing ISO depends on a printer's particular client base," he reasons. "But on the economic side, it is about operating in a very competitive business environment and seeing ourselves as a viable, profitable entity for the future.
"Some may say, 'I don't need ISO because I don't believe in it for me.' The fact is that everyone's trying to stay in business. Presses go faster while quality requirements from clients become higher. Unless we have a formalized process that evaluates and creates a much more efficient workflow from department to department, we cannot look at a client and say, 'I am trying to produce a quality product,' or, 'I am actively engaged in trying to produce a better product.'"
Interdepartmental education
Samuels credits the ISO process for helping to formalize education interdepartmentally within Pictorial Offset, whose motto is "Never Say No." With consultants as coaches, the company conducted formal classroom training and administered written examinations testing staff members' knowledge of procedures.
"At the same time," explains Samuels, "outside specialists were brought in to scrutinize things we've done the same way for years-everything from repairs and maintenance to calibrating processors and imagers, reading control targets, and setting pressures on the web. The result is that anything that had been swept under the carpet is now cleaned up."
Creative Press, a 53-year-old commercial printing firm and certified print supplier located in Evansville, Ind., first engaged in the ISO certification process three years ago but decided to abandon it last year, deeming it expensive, excessive, and unnecessary, says Larry Butts, the company's director of quality assurance.
It could be malarkey
"I know a lot of companies that are ISO-certified," he states. "Frankly, I think if they really sat down and looked at it, they would see that a lot of it is malarkey insofar as the expense they are paying to get and keep it.
"I believe that rather than having a group of ISO people run around and monitor them, if they've got the process set up correctly, and everybody in the plant is held accountable and documents everything as they go along, it doesn't have to be done," asserts Butts, who consults other printers as well as ink and paper suppliers on the development of their own formal quality programs and standard procedures manuals.
"ISO is nothing more than a set of procedures," he continues. "It's a matter of tracking everything, and while that sounds like one big job, it really isn't once you get into doing it. You simply take it one step at a time and go through every department to establish a clear set of standards for every process so that everybody's doing the same thing on the same basis, all the time, without variance anywhere.
"As long as these procedures are in writing, with everyone helping to write them and everyone trained on them from day one, you've got a working procedures program.
"But this doesn't mean that these procedures create the bible from then on," Butts testifies. "Anytime we do an internal investigation, a customer performs an audit, or our employees find better ways of doing things, we sit down and discuss it. If we all agree upon it, it becomes the new standard and is written into the standard operating procedures manual."
Paying the price for standards
Butts explains that Creative Press--which boasts heavy-hitter accounts such as The Walt Disney Company, Lucent Technologies, and Fruit of the Loom--uses its own 500-page standards manual as a major selling point to obtain new accounts, even those with large international corporations otherwise inclined to choose ISO-certified suppliers only.
"It used to be that their mentality was, 'If you're ISO-certified you're the greatest thing around, and we're always going to receive a superior product that's on time with no quality issues,'" he says. "But now they come to a realization and say, 'Here's a company that doesn't have to raise its prices to feed the cost of ISO, but has all the procedures in line with documentation.'"
Butts insists that, in the end, buyers weigh prices above any quality standards certificates hanging on a wall. "Each customer's purchasing department, looking for as many bids as possible to get the optimal price, decides which printer gets the contract," he explains. "As one of our salespersons says, 'The song they sing in the morning is 'Quality, Prompt Delivery, and Dependability,' but in the afternoon, it's 'Price, Price, Price.'"
St. Ives of Cleveland, a web and sheetfed commercial printer that specializes in catalogs and direct mail, represents a company that already had in place a formal quality program but decided to pursue ISO 9002 certification anyway, completing the process in September after five months.
ISO 9002 certification is a company-wide initiative at St. Ives, which is part of St. Ives plc, a publicly held company based in London with business units in England, Wales, Germany, Holland, and the United States. The company's Florida operation received its ISO 9002 registration in October.
Foot in the door
"ISO 9002 certification is expensive, no question about it, but it's like the J.D. Powers of ratings or the Good Housekeeping seal-we're getting quick audiences with people we haven't done business with before," asserts Gary Davis, general manager of St. Ives's Cleveland facility.
Davis continues, "If we bring up ISO to a client, they may not know what the letters stand for, but we get a foot in the door. That in itself is worth a lot. Virtually every printer today will tell you their top criteria is producing a quality product and that they have quality processes in place. It's a claim anybody can make, but ISO proves it."
Davis also argues that the ISO auditing process after certification, which involves surprise visits every six months or so, serves to keep a plant on its toes.
"There're so many changes that take place in a business that it would be easy not to go back and re-address your quality systems and documentation," he reasons. "Things could get by you in a really short amount of time. The discipline that comes with knowing an audit could happen at any time is a great motivation to make sure everything stays up to snuff and doesn't go astray."
