ISO 9001 in airline flight operations

[mutt]

Had the pleasure of sitting through an ISO 9001 presentation this morning.
Whilst I have serious doubts that ISO can help our present operations, I am interested in hearing what others think.
I understand that SAS and Thai presently have 9001 certification for their flight operations, is there anyone else?

Thanks

Mutt

[Upside]

It is my understanding that ISO9001 applies to organisations which require the scope to design, manufacture and inspect a product.

ISO9002 = Manufacture and inspect product
ISO9003 = Insection only

Its difficult to see quite how ISO9001 can be applied to a company providing a service such as an airline without chucking in a libral dose of interpetation.

I assume that the presentation went along the following lines:-


Design = How do we develope a service which meets our custimers needs ?

Manufacture = Doing it !

Inspection = Monitoring satisfaction levels and complience with own procedures.

Unless the management really is 100% behind ISO9000 and is adopting the standard to use as a management tool, rather than just because they think it looks good on the marketing bumpf then i'm afraid it could be more trouble than it's worth.

[mutt]

Upside

Thanks for the input. I totally agree with you, I seriously think that ISO approval in an airline flight operations environment with our present management is an impossibility. But unfortunately someone got the idea at an IATA conference and has dropped it on his minions to achieve it. The goal is to gain approval by Feb 2001, btw the presentation that i saw was the results of 7 months of work.
Now all that we have to do is write step by step procedures for everything that we do!!!!!

Mutt