Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 20, 1994 TAG: 9403180298
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Lon Wagner STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Mike Byrd, director of business and industrial training programs at Virginia Western Community College, has a simple prognosis for companies that dodge the international quality management program:
"They'll be out of business," he said.
The ISO standards were first formalized in 1987, though Britain and other European nations had been working toward universally recognized standards earlier than that.
The ISO program requires a company to train its workers to document quality management procedures. As some companies have learned, previous quality management training doesn't matter internationally - unless it has the ISO 9000 stamp of approval.
Magnox Corp. in Pulaski has more than 100 employees spending three hours per day, three times a week to be trained in ISO 9000. Hiawatha Nicely, executive vice president of Magnox, said the company will likely spend $200,000 in hours and consulting fees by the time it is certified early next year.
"That's a significant dollar investment, but will provide us an insurance policy on our quality program," Nicely said. "I think most companies perform to a level of quality that's accepted worldwide - what they don't do is document it."
Smaller companies that have been able to avoid the certification program until now are finding it more of a requirement. Some manufacturers whose components go into products sold overseas by certified companies aren't sure how much longer they'll be able to get away with not being certified.
Byrd admits many companies simply are using their certification as a marketing tool, pointing out that they have completed the program while a competitor has not.
"We, and a lot of other small companies, are grudgingly being dragged into it," says John Freeland, president of Noble-Met Ltd. in Roanoke County. "I say grudgingly not because it's a bad thing, but because it's not a cheap process."
Noble-Met, a manufacturer of marker bands for balloon catheters, sees no choice. It plans to begin the certification process within the next year.
Even a 20-person business will likely have to pay $30,000 to become certified, Byrd says.
Though many industries in Western Virginia are already certified - Ingersoll-Rand Co., ITT, GE Drive Systems, Chesapeake Packaging among them - the certification has to be updated every few years.
For that reason, Byrd said a Western Virginia ISO 9000 users group has organized to try to develop a resource center, promote the use of the certification program, and try to recruit an official registrar to the region.
There are only about 40 organization with which a company can become registered as ISO 9000 certified, and Byrd cautions that some of those are not recognized in Europe.
The ISO 9000 users group wants to hold an exposition in the fall and invite representatives from the registrars, with the intention of convincing one of them to set up an office in the region.
"There's nothing that says we can't develop our own registrar here in the valley," Byrd says. "I think this is really going to catch on with companies here."
by CNB