25 years of ISO 9000

 borawski's blog provided an excellent statistic on ISO 9000 certification.

"According to the International Organization for Standardization, as of 2009, the total number of organizations certified to ISO 9000 exceeded one million!"

How many of these organizations are meeting the real goals of ISO 9000 certification? How many of these are getting certification just to satisfy their suppliers or to attract investments or to use certification as a marketing tool?

There are several studies done to analyze the linkage between ISO 9000 certification and overall value provided to stakeholders. These conclusions contradict each other. 

Here is the summary of conclusions.

1. ISO 9000 certification alone does not benefit the organization. ISO 9000 certification that is driven by internal motivation benefits the organizations to continuously improve and provides real long term value to stakeholders.

2. ISO 9000 certification alone benefits the organization. ISO 9000 certification that is driven by any type of motivation leads to improvement of processes and this leads to improved productivity, cycle time, and customer satisfaction.

3. ISO 9000 certification does not add any value and is expensive. It is easy to pay money to a consulting company to get ISO certification.

All these conclusions are valid depending on the circumstances of the sample organizations analyzed. These samples may not represent the population or there are major threats to validity. So, conclusions can't be applied to population without analyzing other factors and interactions.

My opinion/observation => 

Each organization is unique. ISO 9000 alone can't guarantee value to stakeholders but implementing quality models such as ISO 9000 with the appropriate commitment, right mindset and right change management culture can really make a difference.