O.C. Tanner had the most advanced quality management systems in our industry. I'm not just saying that; we had statistics that backed up this claim. No question, we were the quality leader. But our competition had something we did not have, namely an ISO 9001:2000 certification. Even though our quality metrics exceeded our competitors, lacking this certification put us at a competitive disadvantage. We decided it would be prudent to secure an ISO 9001:2000 certification. Internally, we called the project ISO 9000—a kind of generic name for the type of certification we were seeking. ISO 9001:2000 is part of the family of the ISO 9000 certifications.
Strictly speaking, ISO 9000 certification is not an IT project. I included it in this book because it has a technical orientation and, in addition, ISO projects typically include IT processes.
For those unfamiliar with ISO certifications, let me briefly explain them. The organization that oversees ISO certifications is the International Organization for Standardization, founded in 1947 and based in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO seeks to establish standards within industries that are benchmarks by which organizations can measure themselves. Typically, these standards are technically oriented.
There are various ISO standards. The two best known are ISO 9000 and ISO 14000, with the former addressing quality issues and the latter addressing environmental standards.
The ISO 9001:2000 certification includes procedures that cover a business' key processes and ways of monitoring and keeping track of these processes. It also includes standards for identifying product defects and strategies for eliminating such defects. According to ISO:
ISO 9000 is concerned with 'quality management.' This means what the organization does to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer and applicable regulatory requirements and continually to improve its performance in this regard.
About the ISO 9001: 2000 standard, which was established in the year 2000 and is now widely implemented, the ISO says: "ISO 9001:2000 is used if you are seeking to establish a management system that provides confidence in the conformance of your product to established or specified requirements." It includes, according to the ISO, five sections:
Activities used to supply your products,
Quality management systems,
Management responsibility,
Resource management and measurement, and
Analysis and improvement.
Obtaining certification is a complex, labor-intensive, time-consuming process. Each of our processes needed explicit quality objectives and documentation. In a general sense, we had to map out key processes and monitor and measure them, all with an eye toward assuring we were maintaining the desired level of quality. Even the quality of suppliers was addressed. And, as a company, we needed to determine the skill required for each and every job in our company, train each employee, and measure how effective that training was. Documenting procedures and results is a major part of ISO certification.
Getting certified is not easy or cheap. We already had implemented a number of programs based on the work of such management gurus as Joseph M. Juran, W. Edwards Deming, Philip Crosby, and Shigeo Shingo, as well as Lean Manufacturing. But as I noted, we needed to obtain this certification in order to communicate to the market our commitment to quality and our dedication to continuous quality improvement.
Marketing may have been the initial impetus, but an amplified culture of quality resulted from imbedding ISO diciplines. Let me also say on a more personal note that the quality orientation of ISO certification matched perfectly the philosophy of our company's founder, Obert C. Tanner, who died in 1993, after guiding the O.C. Tanner Company for 64 years. On a brass plaque in our headquarters, we have a quote from Obert: "We seek to touch the fringes of perfection." This became the slogan of our ISO project. ISO certification served to further improve our quality, and it helped us touch the fringes of perfection.
Let's look now at the One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) we created to manage this ISO project.
The ISO 9000 project did not require much customization of the standard OPPM (Figure 8.1). The standard elements included the objectives, which are listed in the bottom left corner of the form. Note the first objective is Organizational Commitment. This refers to the commitment of the organization toward obtaining the ISO certification. Of course, all projects require a strong commitment from the organization. But with a project like ISO certification, the absolute commitment of everyone in the organization, including management, is absolutely essential, which is why we made it one of our objectives. Without such commitment, it is easy for other, seemingly more pressing business issues to take priority.
Copyright O.C. Tanner 2008. To customize this document, download it to your hard drive from the following web site: www.onepageprojectmanager.com. The document can be opened, edited, and printed using Microsoft Excel or another popular spreadsheet application.
ISO certification is easy to place on the back burner, and when that happens, it is unlikely the organization will ever get the certification it wants. We also list organizational commitment under Major Tasks (Task A).
As I mentioned, written materials and processes are a very important part of the ISO certification process. The remaining objectives, including Develop Quality Manuals, Develop Procedures, Develop Work Instructions, Develop Records, and Develop Internal Audit System address these needs.
One aspect of this project that is somewhat unusual is our breaking it down into four phases. We delineated the phases on the tool with horizontal gray lines, each labeled with a phase: Definition Phase, Implementation Phase, Verification Phase, and Validation Phase. These phases represent an often used standard methodology for ISO implementation projects, helping the project team break the project down into manageable chunks it could more easily focus on. These phases are comprised of 23 quantitative tasks (1 through 23) and three qualitative tasks (A through C).
As an indication of the complexity of this project, most of these tasks had their own OPPM, such as Task 6, Quality Manual. Creating this manual was a significant project by itself. Some tasks, such as Task 14, Awareness Training, did not require a full OPPM. Here, the trainer had on her desk a simple task list that consisted of who was to be trained and when. But many of the other tasks were sufficiently large and complex that they needed to be broken down more granularly into additional owners, objectives, and time lines.
One strength of the OPPM is that it can be used to drill down further and further when necessary, making even the most complex project suitable for the OPPM.
On the qualitative side, Tasks A (Organizational Commitment), B (Our Performance) and C (Consultant Performance) were so critical that we wanted to track each of these with a color line throughout the project. As we talked about in a previous chapter, with projects where you engage the services of a consultant, it is very helpful to include a place on the OPPM where the consultant gives you a score and you give the consultant a score. That's what we've done here with Task B (Our Performance) and Task C (Consultant's Performance). It is a powerful incentive to keep our consultant and us on task by having our performance and the consultant's on public display via the OPPM.
On the right-hand side of the form, we have Owner/Priority. We broke the owners into five groups: Executive Management, Project Manager, ISO Project Teams, Internal Auditors, and ISO Consultant. I've said elsewhere that we don ' t usually have someone outside of the company as an owner. In this situation, we made an exception by making the consultant an owner for four of the major tasks. We did this because the consultant played a very important role relating to certain tasks; it made sense to designate him as an owner. For example, Task 3, Develop Process Map, has the consultant as the top priority owner. That's because we did not know how to do this task while the consultant did, and therefore, the primary responsibility for completing this task fell to the consultant. There are few absolutes in the use of the OPPM. It is highly flexible. The project is the important thing. The OPPM is for the project; the project is not for the OPPM.
The time line (the horizontal line near the bottom labeled Target Dates) shows the length of the project (11 months) and the frequency of the reporting periods (monthly). Choosing monthly time buckets for the reporting period was arbitrary. We could have divided the time into biweekly periods, for example, but felt that monthly reporting was sufficiently frequent to keep the project on track and not so frequent as to make the reporting too time consuming. Progress on the ISO 9000 project was reported monthly to the full management staff using the OPPM as the principal PowerPoint slide.
A critical, absolutely essential element of ISO 9000 is the identification and documentation of procedures. The number of these procedures is determined as you go through the project and can change over time. The procedures have to be thoroughly documented and accompanied with work instructions and records. We tracked this documentation on the OPPM in two ways. One was under the various tasks.
But the second way is unique to this OPPM. You see it on the line directly above the Target Dates section labeled #Procedures Completed. In April, we thought we needed 17 procedures and one had been thoroughly documented and completed (which is why the April box has 1/17 in it). By July, we had documented 17 procedures but reasoned we needed three more (17/20), which means we had added three procedures to the 17 we had originally. But by September, we figured we needed only 19 procedures and that all had been completed (19/19).
Also, as mentioned previously, we use bold squares to highlight major milestones. This OPPM has three such squares. The first was Task 18, Conduct Pre-Audit Assessment. It was to be completed in September, which is noted in the bold square indicating this date. This task, as shown on the form, was completed on time. The second milestone was Task 20, Registration Audit, which is to be completed by November. And the third was Task 22, Certification, which is to be completed by January. These were the three most critical tasks in the project.
Another variation of the standard OPPM found with this form is the cost section, which has been expanded to read Costs and Metrics. The first bar, Expenses, shows we have spent $ 135,000 out of a budgeted $ 150,000. It is yellow because we are running a little over budget.
You will see that this section also includes Work Instructions and Records. These are the supporting building blocks and metrics needed for the procedures. There were 19 procedures in our company, under which there were 580 work instructions. There can be one procedure that requires 100 work instructions, for instance, while another procedure that requires only one or two. The records document the processes. One value of the OPPM with a project as complex as ISO 9000 is that anyone with this tool can assess the progress of the project with one look.
Speaking of how well the OPPM relates the progress of the project, note that at the time of this OPPM, two tasks were behind schedule and one ahead of schedule. Task 14, Awareness Training, should have been completed in August, but we are now in September and it has yet to be completed. Task 19, the Pre-Audit Corrective Actions, did not start in September, as planned. Task 20, the Registration Audit, has started early and what was scheduled to be completed in October has been completed in September.
Also worth noting is Task A, which has been strong throughout the project. But Tasks B and C have not been as consistent. Our performance slipped in June and July when scheduled vacations slowed the project more than anticipated. We recovered in August. The consultant fell behind in July and August, but recovered and is on track in September.
These are the major elements in this ISO 9000 OPPM. This project, though complex, did not require much customization of the OPPM. In one page, with very little variation from the standard format, we were able to convey all the important information upper management would need to know about this project.
As a postscript, O.C. Tanner was certified ISO 9000 compliant on schedule. The auditors' conclusion was that O.C. Tanner's system was not only ISO compliant but was unusually mature and substantially more robust than the typical first-time applicant.