Cost Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification

Somebody posted the following discussion question on a LinkedIn group that I am following:

Hi I am collecting all the reasons for obtaining ISO 9001 accreditation. I am especially interested in the cost benefits of having the accreditation. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Firstly, as an aside, accreditation goes to an auditor, a quality system gets certified or a certification.

Here is my response to the question.

If I may go beyond cost benefits to include all financial benefits then: 

1. The certification on its own will have some limited financial benefits, mainly for marketing and sales: 

   a. Your company brand is enhanced. 

   b. Some companies will not source from suppliers who do not have ISO certification. 

   c. Many potential customers will prefer an ISO certified company over one that is not certified. 

2. The real benefit to your company is not in the certification itself but, if done rightly and for the right motivation, in the improvement to the quality of your company processes, resulting in the improvement to the quality of your final product or service and enhanced customer satisfaction. Here is the real cost benefit: a reduction in your cost of failure. It is generally accepted that the later a failure or defect is detected, the more expensive it is to correct. A good, effectively implemented quality management system (QMS) will help reduce your cost of failure by reducing the occurrence of defective work and helping you find any defective work before it gets to the client. A QMS built on ISO 9001 principles has a built in feed-back mechanism for continuous improvement; you should see your cost of failure reduce over time. 

3. This, however, comes at a cost: the cost of prevention (implementing and executing on your QMS) and the cost of appraisal (quality records and audits). It may well be that these costs initially exceed the offset from the reduced cost of failure, but you should definitely get a return on investment over time if you ensure that you put in a good, effective QMS and do not merely go for ISO certification for its own sake.

Elizabeth (Aunty Bessie) Sessler 1916-4-27 - 2013-6-30 R.I.P.

Aunty Bessie passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning, June 30, 2013. She died of pneumonia in her own bed , in her own room at Summerfield Park, exactly as she had hoped and prayed for, and our close, mutual friend, Pat Prinsloo, was with her at the end. She was 97 years old. According to Pat she spent all her waking time of the last few hours in prayer, aware that this was probably the end.

Although she was practically blind, only able to discern light and dark shapes, and even then only when the light was good, and although she was starting to become hard of hearing, nevertheless, her mind was sharp as a tack and you had better tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or she would catch you out if you just tried to fob her off.

She spent much of her waking time in intercession, praying not only for people in need that she knew but also nationally and internationally for people who were victims of floods, earthquakes, fires and civil wars. She listened to the news and was up on national and international affairs although she was fed up with politicians of all stripes, particularly where there was corruption and public waste. However, she never got used to calling it Zimbabwe - it was always Rhodesia for her.

Her reputation as an intercessor got to be quite awesome and people sought her out to pray for them and their needs. Once you got on to her intercession list the only way you came off was if she moved you to her thanksgiving list. She would follow up and ask how it was going with such-and-such. If you told her that the issue had resolved itself some time back she would become indignant and ask why you had never told her. What must God think of her, she would say, asking him for things that he had already answered instead of thanking him? How could she thank God if you did not tell her that her prayers had been answered?

The three sisters: Marjorie, Ethel, Bessie

Bessie the 'Gal - Durban Bay

Aunty Bessie lived a long and varied life with many ups and downs, a lot of enjoyment, fun and celebration but also a lot of hardship and pain woven throughout. Right to the end Aunty Bessie always had something to get up for in the morning. She was a real human being and daughter of Eve who came to know the loving mercy of God and the joy of sharing that with others. I still ask her to intercede for me.

To Ingrid - Mother's Day 2013

While quaffing a beer on a public house patio I talked about you;



And I found nothing strange about showing your picture while riding the train.


 Absorbing the sounds of underground jazz made me wish you were there;




And seeing the beauty of wetlands and ponds, and a lone tree standing, made me wish you were there.

The fact is that beautiful things that are new remind me of you.

Do Conservative Party MPs represent Stephen Harper or their constituents?

This is obviously a question which leads to a lot of confusion in the minds of parliamentarians today - right up to the Government House Leader, the Hon. Peter Van Loan. If MPs are confused I can be forgiven for my own confusion in the matter, and so can you. Fortunately we now have Elizabeth May in Parliament to explain it to all of us in very simple words that even I can understand.

Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Langley, as well as the hon. member for Vegreville—Wainwright. As a specific case, may I say this is one of the most important points of privilege I have heard in the brief two years, almost, that I have been serving here? It cuts to the core of what is wrong with parliamentary democracy that the hon. government House leader could put before you a sports metaphor that we are here as teams, as brands or colours, and we are all to take instructions from our team boss.

We are not here as teams. The principle of Westminster parliamentary democracy is that we are here as representatives of our constituencies and our constituents. We are merely incidentally members of political parties. Political parties do not exist in our Constitution. They are not an essential part of our democracy. They have grown to be seen to be the most interesting thing going on, and we have grown to see politics as some sort of sport. However, democracy is not a sport. We are not playing on teams, and each individual member has individual rights, and the members for Langley and Vegreville—Wainwright feel their rights have been infringed.

I would add that I rose on a point of order to you some many months ago on the question of S.O. 31s and the fact that they were increasingly being used for purposes that, while not against our Standing Orders as they are written, are against the spirit of Standing Orders as described by former Speaker Madam Justice Sauvé, who pointed out that they should typically speak to matters of local concern in our constituencies and should not be used as a place for attacks on others, specifically ad hominem personal attacks.

At the time you said you might comment on that later. Perhaps this point of privilege might give you a chance to further elucidate when it is inappropriate for the approved S.O. 31s from the Conservative war room to be very vicious attacks and the ones that members wish to make about the concerns of their own constituents to be censored and prevented from being presented in this place.

from Elizabeth May's Parliamentary web site.
http://elizabethmaymp.ca/parliament/statements/2013/03/26/privilege-s-o-31/

Dear Hon. Bob Chiarelli, Minister of Energy:

There is still time to make the right decision on nuclear.

It’s a bad idea to waste billions by refurbishing the Darlington nuclear reactors to keep them running until 2055. This plan is terrible for both our economy and our environment.

No nuclear project in Ontario’s history has come in on budget or on time. The existing Darlington reactors were supposed to cost $4 billion, but came in $10 billion over budget. The recent refurbishment at Bruce Nuclear is $2 billion over budget.

At a time of record deficits, we should not be wasting billions on old technology. In fact, we are still paying for the debt from previous nuclear projects.

Your government decided to exempt this project from a provincial environmental review, which means that we still don’t have an independent analysis of the risks and costs of this project.

I urge you to conduct an independent review of costs and alternatives to nuclear. It is unacceptable and irresponsible that the Ontario government has nothing in place to protect ratepayers or taxpayers from nuclear cost overruns.

Nuclear is an inflexible source of base-load power that removes incentives for conservation, efficiency or more affordable sources of power.

Committing billions to nuclear will hurt recent strides in developing other sources of energy, including renewables, and hamper our ability to take advantage of new, emerging technologies. Your government has already directed agencies to stop the expansion of renewable energy in 2018 to reserve grid capacity for nuclear.

If the cost to our pocketbook isn’t enough, nuclear also presents a significant threat to our environment.

Darlington’s use of Lake Ontario water for cooling destroys millions of fish, larvae and eggs each year, and Darlington is also a major source of thermal and chemical pollution in the lake.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, THERE IS STILL NO PLAN OR COST GUESTIMATE TO DEAL WITH NUCLEAR WASTE. Meanwhile, the amount of dangerous nuclear waste continues to grow. We also face the risk of a serious nuclear accident in the most populated region of the province right over and next to the most important source of the region's drinking water.

More affordable, reliable and safer alternatives to nuclear exist. The Darlington refurbishment should be halted until the need for, alternatives to, and environmental effects of nuclear are fully and independently considered.

Thank you,
Terence C McCann
Holland Landing, ON

More nuclear at Darlington is the wrong move

Send a message to Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli to tell him that that nuclear is the wrong move.