Everything about ISO is big, its international, been around for almost as long as me, has a gazillion members, about 18 000 published standards for all and anything and uses six words on any subject when three will do nicely thank you. Its pursuit of standardization is apparently inexhaustible spewing out some 1100 new standards each year for the most unlikely products and activities. Ship recycling? I kid you not!
Over the decades ISO has devised and set the rules for the compliance game. No, you wont find it on PlayStation because it’s much, much bigger, more complicated and involves billions of dollars every year from companies around the world who have to play to get business.
The 600 Kg gorilla in the compliance game is, yes of course you knew, quality! ISO 9001, currently in its 2008 edition and has some 1.1 million adherents. Here in the good ole RSA we probably have around 3 500 today all spending a fortune each year to get and keep their certificates.
And that’s the rub, the cost of getting and keeping your certificate. Its based on some wonky ISO criteria one of which is how many employees do you have? This means the fewer people you have the less you end up paying because ISO requires your certification body to spend fewer days dredging through your documents and records. Well, sort of, but if you cost it against your total number of employees you get a different picture. The smaller you are, and we are small, the more the cost per capita shoots up until the poor sod with less than 10 happy souls on the payroll is going to blow his nose in anguish.
The trouble is it’s small companies that need to play the compliance game most of all to qualify for tenders, get on those big company vendor lists, or maybe export and grow! So how does today’s Bill Gates get out the garage and play the compliance game?
