[geeks] Drooogs and regulations (was Three heads)

[David Cantrell]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 03:31:19PM -0700, Ken Hansen wrote:
> My former employer (Bellcore/Telcordia) was trying to
> really break into the european market, so they felt
> they needed to get ISO 9001 certification

Shoving my cynicism aside for one moment ...

They were right, you do really need it.  Mainly because part of being
accredited is that you must be able to document your interactions with
the outside world.  In practice, this means that you need to be able
to get adequate documentation out of your suppliers, and so they have
to be at least capable of passing an ISO 9000* audit themselves.

I really like the idea of it myself.  Documentation is at the heart of
quality IME, and having what is a pretty good standard to aim for, a
standard for which there is lots of good quality proffesional expertise
available (plus some charlatans, of course, but then they aren't ISO
9000 certified themselves) makes achieving good documentation easier
for corporates.  Getting a nice! shiny! certificate helps sell the idea
of documentation to the board too.

* - s/ISO 9000/ISO 900[012]/g in everything I write :-)

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   Educating this luser would be something to frustrate even the
   unflappable Yoda and make him jam a lightsaber up his arse
   while screaming "praise evil, the Dark Side is your friend!".
                              -- Derek Balling, in the Monastery