Who knows, maybe I’ll get a question. It’s certainly true that nobody understands this stuff and is surprised when I tell them how it works.
If you’ve ever wondered why some products have those UL or CE or CSA stickers but some don’t, or how your toaster gets checked to make sure it doesn’t electrocute you, or who comes up with all that crap anyway, or why anyone thinks ISO 9000 is a good thing and is there an ISO 8000? I’m the guy to ask, because I know everything there is to know about it (or know someone who does.)
Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?
All right, what’s up with this brit/ISO 7xxx security/disaster standard? Had it dropped on my lap then taken off when it was discovered it would cost money.
What tasks are not suited to be covered by ISO style regs?
Okay, I’ll try a few questions. I’ve always been curious.
I understand the CE and ULC and CSA and UL (and ULC) markings, but what is the U back-to-back with the R all about? (Or is it an L with an R?) That’s not a good description, but I see it on all kinds of equipment, and I have no idea what it is. Is it another sort of standard, or something else?
I know about ISO9000, but now I see things like ISO14000. What happened to 10- through 13000? Is 14000 better? More stringent? For different industries? Something else?
These next questions are more opinion, RickJay, but I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts:
I’ve done contracts at a few places that have gone through ISO certification and it always seems to throw the people in them into a panic. Why do you suppose this is?
Why is ISO9000 (and I suppose 14000 too) a good thing? I can see the use, but as I said, I’m interested in your views.
At my company, we ended up doing our ISO certification in-house, as opposed to hiring consultants to do the majority of the work. Other branches of the company entirely outsourced.
ISO 14000 is a standard for environmental management - specifically, of waste, or anything that could be hazardous. It’s vaguely similar to the quality standard but it deals entirely with environmental protection, and it’s stricter. Unlike ISO 9000, it requires adherence to legislation on top of its own requirements.
There’s also an ISO 18000 standard, for workplace safety and health, and a standard called ISO Guide 25, for proper laboratory procedures.
The 8000, 10000, and 11000 series of documents aren’t standards - they’re all guidelines for quality systems. Stuff like the definitions documents, guidelines for auditors, audit plans, continuous improvement - it’s just a dizzying array of stuff. Technically, however, they are not STANDARDS - you could not properly audit someone to ISO 8402, because it’s just a book of definitions. You can audit someone to 9001, 14001, and 18001, because they have actual requirements you can follow.
Well, of course, some places need ISO and some don’t. Some companies, as you can probably guess, get it purely for marketing reasons or the ego of the PResident or whatever, and so let it slide for 11 months and go into a crazed panic at the last minute hoping to pass the audit (which they usually do anyway.)
However, having been on both sides of the coin, I think a lot of it is just that being audited is intimidating. Having strangers come to your workplace and evaluate your work is just a really inherently scary process. I mean, who enjoys a tax audit? Even if the auditors are really friendly and stress being on your side, even if you’ve got your crap together, I still find it intimidating.
In fact, standard companies (the real, certified ones) get audited too, by governmental standards bodies. And it’s intimidating for us.
ISO 14000 is a very specialized product - like CSMS (trucking safety) or Guide 25 (laboratories) and serves a very specific need, so that’s sort of industry-dependent.
As to ISO 9000, I’m not entirely sure it has been a good thing overall, and to be perfectly frank I’m very glad it constitutes a minority of my employer’s business. The concept of having a management system that is auditd by an external party is a very sound one. It’s legitimately helpful, or can be, because having an outside party check your work is an invaluable aid. A third party can see the forest where you only see the trees, can see holes that you came to accept as part of normal business. Looking at the less commonly used standards, like TAPA or CSMS, they’re remarkably effective. You can objectively measure their effects.
ISO 9000, on the other hand, sort of became the darling of management consultants and was blown up into something of a business buzzconcept, like “Paradigms” or “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective (Insert target market here.)” The sheer volume of companies registered, auditing companies registering, and consultants getting them registered has, naturally, made the whole thing into more of a stock commodity that it was ever really meant to be. There’s got to be a million registrations worldwide.
Like anything else, if you’re doing something just because you feel you have to, you stop giving a crap about it, and the relative level of talent and quality declines with volume anyway. Some companies have merged ISO in with thier own business processes and managed to come out with a compliant system that works really well. Others, and I’ve seen some awful ones, have “quality systems” with manuals large enough to be dropped from aircraft as anti-personnel weapons that are about as helpful as a sucking chest wound. I think, frankly, that a lot of companies with ISO 9000 systems should re-evaluate their value.
But of course, ISO 9000 has now become so common that many companies HAVE to have it because their customers require it. (And in some cases it makes sense. If you’re an auto manufacturer, knowing your suppliers have a quality system can be very helpful. It makes it easier to trace and solve defect problems.)
You’d be surprised. See the last answer in this post.
By and large, the electrical products standards are pretty well updated, and they do work. You don’t see nearly as many house fires as you used to.
Remember, however, that the UL or CSA mark must be ON THE PRODUCT. If it’s on the box that doesn’t mean a thing.
Surprisingly enough, I’ve never seen such a thing, but I’ll get back to you on this one next week. Certifications ARE a matter of public record, but ease of access might not be that great.
At my company, we ended up doing our ISO certification in-house, as opposed to hiring consultants to do the majority of the work. Other branches of the company entirely outsourced.
Which is better, generally?
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(shrug) It depends how big your company is and who you’ve got. In all honestly, consultants are pretty expensive on a per hour basis, and in the long run you need to have someone in house who knows what the hell’s going on. Hiring consultants for any new business project can be a good idea if you need a little specialized expertise you don’t possess; $25,000 may be a lot of dough to shell out for 12 days of Ima Consultant’s time, but it sure beats hiring a full time staffer to do a job that will be complete in three months. In the long run I’d say if a quality system is properly implemented, your own employees should be able to manage it.
Depends on the product and, hence, the specific standard. This may amaze you, but…
A lot of safety standards are totally voluntary.
Some are not, but some are. Generally speaking, of course, a great many products DO have legislated safety requirements, especially anything that plugs into house current, or anything that’s really specialized. On the other hand, there’s no law that says a hockey helmet or a safety hardhat has to be UL or CSA certified, and you can find uncertified junk all over the place. And many electrical products DON’T have a law governing them, but in rpactice all the major manufacturers are doing it anyway out of fear they could get their asses sued off if a house burns down and the product isn’t certified.
While the companies doing this (UL, CSA, Entela, etc) are all private companies, applying standards written by private companies (the certifiers do not write the standards themselves, however) it’s common for governments to adopt-by-reference a safety standard. But not universal. Do not assume a product you bought was certified to a safety standard.
This means that foreign companies sometimes have to get stuff certified before the export it to the USA. (Europe is tougher in this regard than the US or Canada, though they do this more for protectionism than safety concerns.) However, the fundamental standard and certification process would be the same for the same standard, whether it’s a company from China or a company from Columbus. If it’s Standard 245B, it’s Standard 245B.
I have prepared process documentation for three different manufacturing companies. Each of the three were subsequently certified for ISO9000. During the certification process, there seemed to be a feeling that having the certification would lead to an increase in business. That didn’t happen. In fact, I have never had a prospective customer ask if a given company was certified. Most customers just don’t seem to care. Any comments? I am not being beligerent, I swear.
That’s no surprise, Louis. I personally am not familiar with a company that got ISO 9000 and then got brand new customers as a result.
I HAVE heard of companies that were made to get it by specific, usually existing customers, or an extensions of existing business, or by a specific customer that required it before a contract could be signed. Ford, GM and Chrysler, as well as most of the other auto manufacturers, absolutely require it for most suppliers, for instance, and I do know some companies who got ISO 9000 just to land a single contract with an auto company.
But I’ve never personally heard of Widgets Inc. getting ISO and then having the widgets fly off the shelves because people think it’s so great they got ISO 9000.
I believe this is what Spoons is talking about. My understanding is that it stands for “UL Recognized,” whereas the round logo stands for “UL Listed.” So, my question is, what is the difference?
What is CE anyway? Safety? Product compliance (to what?)? I’m-better-than-you chest-thumping?
ISO9000 certification for EDS was a boondoggle. What made it mandatory was customer accounts, and the fact that once we implemented it, we had to keep it up.
Is there any sort of work out there for folks that write/have written a metric assload of ISO 9000/9001 quality docs and procedure manuals?
The standard UL mark means a specific product is certified against a specific standard. This company is talking about a somewhat different program (in this case their stuff is based on the UL-94 standard) in which component materials or devices can be “Recognized” by UL as meeting certain standards. However, the things being recognized are not by themselves finished products that could be certified and listed.
“Recognition” of the component MATERIALS isn’t the same as certifying the product itself. However, I believe that if your component materials get UL recognition, it becomes easier to have the final product certified to relevant safety standards. UL runs a program whereby manufacturers of many sorts of materials and small components can have their materials in a common “Recognized” database. I think you can link to their respective information online, link to MSDS sheets, the whole nine yards. That way, if you’re making something out of plastics, or switches, or any one of a number of small things than can be “recognized,” you can use recognized materials, and UL certification is much easier. The recognition program is restricted only to things that are not complete end products.
I do not believe CSA has a comparative program.
So if you have a finished product, say a toaster, and you see the regular UL mark on it, that product is certified by UL to a given safety standard. If you see the backwards UR on it, that means only that the specific component the mark is on was part of the recognition program - the toaster unit as a whole, however, has to have the old UL mark to be a certified product.
Now for a new thread… “What exactly is a technical writer?”
You know, I feel awfully stupid. Apparently I walked away from 6 year as a tape guy, and then a Batch Operator guy with an inherently wrong idea about what did what.
Tristan, you could always become an ISO 9000 consultant. I know some who makes a $1000-$2000 a day and get steady work. But you have to know a lot of consulting mumbo-jumbo and own at least one really expensive suit.
Earthling, thank you for providing the link. That mark is exactly the one I was asking about.
And thank you for the answers, RickJay. This is a rather interesting topic, and I certainly appreciate your responses.
Tristan, I’m not about to start an “Ask the Technical Writer” thread, but I’m sure that if you posted your question in its own thread, you’d get a number of good answers. There are some technical writers here, IIRC. Including me.
