ISO Adventure, by Gery Warner, P.Eng., President Tentnology Co., Surrey, B.C., Canada
Tentnology® Co.’s quality management system has been registered since 1997 to ISO 9002 for manufacture of tents & fabric structures. This is the story of Tentnology’s journey.
Gery Warner, P.Eng. is president & founder of the company. Tentnology has been manufacturing design-original tents & fabric structures since 1971.
“ISO is garbage! Absolute garbage! Don't talk to me about ISO; we've got better things to do!” Tony Barnes was a riveting speaker. The charming New Zealand curmudgeon had survived hardships & unspeakable cruelties in Singapore's notorious Changi prison as a little boy at the hands of his Japanese captors. Yet this soulful, elegant man had risen to an unimaginable level of forgiveness out of that hellhole where he had every reason to hate. Although he never forgot, he rose to become a crucial part of the Japanese economic miracle of the second half of this century.
The crowd of several hundred prominent businessmen listened in raptured silence to the tall man’s tales & lessons. I was mesmerized and mystified by his ISO declaration. Many of us in that room had invested mightily in ISO 9000, the international standard for product and service quality assurance. It seemed we all, to a person, were embarrassed to ask what he meant.
I left the meeting like many, in charmed be-puzzlement. By the time I made my way down to the lobby, it struck me that I had to have an answer! Turning on my heels & sprinting back up the escalator, I found Tony holding court with a gaggle of senior businessmen. I overheard him mutter “We’re free for the weekend to enjoy the sites of Vancouver but are open to invitations.”
Leaping to the chance, I invited him to one of our infrequent informal salons. My beloved & I bring together an eclectic, sometimes spontaneously combustible group of people to explore ideas. Tony seemed to be just the kind of man with an opinion & solid experience to back it up that made that odd sorts group. Having decided on the spot we would have one with him as the guest of honour, would he come? He graciously accepted & I could defer my question.
But not for long. Next day, in the car, “What were you thinking when you said, ‘ISO is garbage’, Tony? There must have been 200 people in that room that collectively invested millions into the ISO idea. Perhaps we were all wrong, but just maybe we need an explanation?”
He said, “Of course. You see, ISO is garbage if you don’t do anything with it. If you achieve certification, then sit back on your corporate fanny & do nothing with it, it’s garbage for your company, plain & simple! Which is precisely what it is for most companies I see.”
“Oh, like getting a degree in physics but working for the rest of your life as a mechanic?” I ventured. “Exactly! Most people & organizations become self-satisfied, & lose that desire to achieve more than just money. It is the idea of ‘Kaizen’ that revolutionized the quality concept in the world. Think of it: constant improvement. It’s never over. The goal is an illusive, ever-moving target."
Well, the party was fascinating with ideas like sparklers on a New Years night. Admittedly, sometimes they looked more like welding dazzle and some threatened to turn from slow burn to explosions. Like when the leader of a right wing provincial political party was espousing his views on the incontestability of the Old Testament. Tony voiced his rather secular views on organized religion in blunt, but colourful language & time stood still till the author from Bangladesh threw in the joke about a priest, rabbi, & mullah and the crowd was belly laughing.
I think one can hold the reins on some things like that party & your business in a sort of lose-tight way. We want to encourage creativity without smothering it with tight rules of behaviour. One can look at ISO as sort of rules of engagement or social etiquette for corporate operations. Excellent employees with a sense of humour can get the firm through the tough spots, but only the discipline guided by (SOP) standard operating practices that can keep the company on an even keel when those employees are on holiday.
ISO has helped Tentnology achieve that balance. Of course we were looking for structure and balance before & when some years ago I read about ISO it jumped off the page at me as exactly what we needed. From our experience, I can safely say ISO is there to assist those who are looking for what it has to offer.
When under fire, ISO’s quality system works well for us. One’s ISO program, audited by an objective third party, means the business owner no longer has to be Mister Meany. When shipper George sends the goods to Tallahassee instead of Tucson, he has, as Dezi Arnez says to Lucy, “Some ’splain’n to do.” Which he can explain to the ISO system instead of to his manager. As well, ISO helps establish preventative action programs, facilitating vendor pre-qualification & control. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
ISO gives entrepreneurs & small growing business the structural tools to maintain a functioning business while preparing for growth without madness. If you succeed & are mortal, you just might get the odd customer complaint in the flurry of activity that comes with growth. Without a company quality system built on the ISO standard, a faithful receptionist taking calls from a customer might, for example, handle the incident responsibly or, at the other extreme, dismiss it out of hand, perhaps not telling anyone about it. This reaction, & thus that of the company, might be random, subjective. In any case, how your firm handles the complaint without a pre-defined procedure is disturbingly dependent upon the individual employee’s attributes. And when that person takes a sabbatical to find the true & deeper meaning to life, his replacement may handle complaints in an unacceptable way. That’s why the SOP system … Standard Operating Procedure; so even on a bad day, we stand a better chance of stick-handling challenges well.
With an ISO-based quality system in place, we can train any employee how to use – and often improve – a standard operating procedure. There is a far better chance that someone will write up a non-conformance report and ensure it gets into the right hands for immediate remedial action & systemic correction ... I say the odds are definitely in your favour. Of course, a quality system built on ISO is never 100% watertight, but having a pre-defined system that everyone in the company has helped build sure beats the old way.
The effect on our business has been to empower our employees to do something about ‘quality’; in other words, constantly improving the way Tentnology meets its customer needs. ISO’s emphasis on traceability has ensured more consistent action & quality maintenance. Traceability is a big word. To us, it now means the buck stops at the right door. ISO has given us a far higher level of self-confidence. We are far more self-assured in all aspects of our enterprise. If a customer complains about something, 99% of the time we can trace the item back to find the all-important root cause problem, if it lives in our plant or system or lands at the doorstep of supplier or client.
Internally, ISO has facilitated our understanding of the various tasks & processes that satisfy our customers’ requirements. For example, after a person has taken an ISO internal auditing course, they have the expertise to audit another department. Shipping audits Sales, Sales audits shipping, etc. It has been an opportunity that all employees have really bought into as it gives them a much better understanding of why the company is here as well as greater respect for each other & for the customer.
ISO spurred us on to ensure all drawings are complete or in process & actually used in the plant & field. ISO has helped us manage our documents so no unauthorized forms, drawings, or price lists live longer lives in the company than they should. In the good old days, ancient ghosts could make a tent part. “Just because it has always been made like that & the drawing is right here in this shop drawer. See, it’s signed off by you in 1992.”
ISO also provides an international ‘designation’ recognized by the cognoscenti. Foreign military often demand their supplier quality systems be registered. One can look at ISO registration as a ‘professional’ certification for a company’s quality assurance system. Professional designations for a doctor or engineer operate on the principle of double jeopardy. Professionals hold the public trust not because they might sport a white smock or professorial goatee. The public knows that if a professional fails to perform or behave in an appropriate manner to a certain level of excellence, not only are they subject to the laws of the land, (so are fair game for roving packs of lawyers), but they can be called to task by their professional associations. Professional status means double jeopardy or it means mothing. The organization has the authority to cancel professional status & ability to make a living. In the covid injection case, this power was corrupted and abused. But employed responsibly, professional organizations can be critical for protecting the public. ISO registration provides a similar level of confidence. At the end of the day, how you build and deploy your quality system that really counts, not the registration certificate on the wall.
Tentnology systemizes. We have proceeded on the theory that although we can run well with excellent management in spite of poor systems, we cannot manage well every day with poor systems. We are human & to err is what humans do. Still, if we codify excellent practice, Tentnology will carry through lapses in management & in spite of an occasionally distracted employee. Moreover, we think systemization will assist excellent employees to go above & beyond the ordinary & in so doing, raise this company of people above & beyond current performance.
On that hypothesis, we engaged ISO & ‘IT’ consultants to help us achieve corporate Nirvana. The ISO implementation process has worked hand-in-glove with implementation of our integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. Oh, I have had my moments of wanting to ‘strangle’ the ITs. But, we have the system working now, & the discipline imposed upon us by ourselves through ISO has helped.
We have come close to Nirvana; we’re not there yet & perhaps never will be in corporate Kaizen heaven. But Tentnology is saner, happier & set for expansion without undue grief. At the dawn of the 21st century, I recommended ISO registration to IFAI’s Tent Rental Division. With the benefit of hindsight, I endorse that decision now … not so much for external benefit, but instead for peace of mind.