The ISO 9000 quality standard "stifles innovation" and seems designed to keep the status quo, he told his audience. He called "absolutely tragic" and "a catastrophe" the mentality that says "I have applied the standard, so all is OK; I have filled in the charts and made the graphs."
The French tire company is noted for innovation. American drivers are accustomed to asking for Michelin tires when they want, and can afford, the best. Moreover, Michelin himself was on hand to receive the Lavoisier Medal from the French rubber and plastics engineer's professional association, AFICEP. It is hardly likely that Messr. Michelin has anything against high quality standards.
Francois Michelin has the reputation and the position to say aloud what most in the automotive industry will only whisper - that ISO 9000 and its relatives, all derived from an old U.S. military standard, do not guarantee, or even encourage, quality. They do create an atmosphere of conformity, which Michelin called a "very terrifying form of racism".
ISO 9000 has other vocal detractors, all apparently speaking from experience.
James Allen Smith, an American management guru (coauthor of Optimizing Quality in Electronics Assembly), seems to delight in tweaking the noses of Corporate America and the Quality Mafia. He calls ISO bureaucratic, costly, and unlikely to improve real quality. However, he says, it does generate income for consultants and standard-setting bodies that govern registration and sell documents.
Claudia Bach, who is president of Document Center, Inc., one of the document-selling organizations that presumably profit from the wide-spread use of international standards, notes that their short-term effect has been to balkanize the marketplace.
Says Bach, "Manufacturers are finding that more countries are setting up unique regulations, along with the testing facilities to verify those regulations. Countries that previously have not paid particular attention to standards are now using this situation as a business opportunity to set up a conformance structure that burdens manufacturers as never before."
U.S. standards organizations have not been prepared for the politics of world standards "harmonization", which seem to become less harmonious all the time. According to Bach, "We are discovering that we are involved in a political process, not a technical one."
The former standards officer at the U.S. mission to the European Union, Helen Delaney, points out that standards have been used as barriers to trade for U.S. companies. First, European standards negotiations are closed to Americans. U.S. companies that regularly trade with Europe cannot participate in the European standards process unless they have manufacturing plants in Europe. Second, products produced in Europe to European standards benefit from a "presumption of conformity". Those which are produced to American standards enjoy no such advantage.
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