For another perspective from a cynic who's been exposed to 'ISO9000' certification (in a non-aviation industry); it's paper pusher's heaven: Basically you must document your 'process', and show compliance to that process. The process it's self can be as broken as you like, just so long as you have a (documented) process (and follow it). Fixing the process becomes a complete nightmare. It's the sort of thing that makes some people a lot of money whilst getting in the way of real work
I will however grant that the implementation may have been badly broken, and the company has since gone bust..