Raising awareness of the benefits of certification and assurance services
‘Implementing the ISO 9000 standards in Turkey: a study of large companies’ (Calisir, Bayraktar, Beskesh, 2001) sets out to discover what factors have caused satisfaction for large Turkish companies when they have been certified to ISO 9000. In particular the research looked to compare ‘the impact of improvements generated after attaining ISO 9000 with the impact of difficulties experienced in ISO 9000 implementation process’.
To complete this research, a survey of 73 large (100+ employees) Turkish enterprises, all certified to ISO 9000 was carried out in 1998. The companies came from a variety of industries and had held certificates for an average of 5.4 years.
The survey asked about the levels of success in achieving expected outcomes in a number of areas; out of a maximum success score of 5, the key areas of success were felt to be:
|
Key areas of success |
max. 5 |
| Standardization | 4.11 |
| Defect/error rate in production/service | 4.01 |
| Relationships with suppliers | 4.01 |
| Enterprise’s quality reputation | 3.97 |
| Interdepartmental relationships | 3.89 |
| Enterprise’s efficiency | 3.89 |
| Product/service quality | 3.85 |
| Communication among personnel | 3.79 |
| A perfect start for TQM | 3.74 |
| Use of modern management techniques | 3.71 |
| Overseas market share | 3.68 |
| The number of products/service per employee | 3.68 |
| Personnel motivation | 3.67 |
| The percentage of overseas sales within the total sales | 3.63 |
| Manpower planning | 3.53 |
| Increasing market share in Turkey | 3.48 |
Overall, 94% of the companies reported being satisfied or very satisfied with ISO 9000 and none reported dissatisfaction.
The report concludes, ‘It is obvious from the results that large companies’ satisfaction with ISO 9000 was influenced by operational improvements and overall success achieved after attaining ISO 9000’. Furthermore, this indicates ‘that large companies may be more satisfied with ISO 9000 through increased emphasis on generating operational improvements and being successful in general. In particular, they should focus on increasing product/service quality, reducing error/defect rate in production/service and achieving standardization’.
Istanbul Teknik Universitesi (Calisir, Bayraktar, Beskese)