ISO9100

>ISO9100:2001 (D)
Quality Management Systems.

Translation Clause 6.2
“Personnel that implement activities, that affect the product quality, must be able to do so
with the appropriate education, training, skills and experience.

We strive to deliver a product or service of high integrity and high quality and we do so using “tools”. Whether the “tool” is a computer, a machine, or a software program, we train, qualify and certify our personal as proof of their ability with that “tool”. But are you aware that you may be using a “tool” that you are not qualified to use?
If this assumption is correct, a mistake on your part may invalidate your insurance or affect your obligation under contract to your customer. If this assumption is correct, you may have personnel in your company, who use this “tool”, however are not qualified to do so. If this assumption is correct and you are not offering your employees a training route to learn how to use this “tool”, you will be in breach of your ISO9100 approval.
ISO9100 is an international approval and an international attempt to improve and control company performance. Those companies that become approved to this standard show their ability to reach the high quality levels demanded in the modern day marketplace, but they can only do this, if the assumption above is not correct, however, it is correct!
The “tool” is the English language. Your employees use this tool every day and in some companies no chance is available for them to learn or obtain a qualification. But the story does not end with ISO9100, there are more negative implications you should realise.
__How would you react to a company, who’s communications in your own native language seemed to be written by a child, or were full of mistakes and ambiguity? Would this make you confident in working together with them? Would you perceive the company as a professional partner?
__How would your sales be affected because you could not correctly understand your customer’s wishes and needs, or indeed, the feeling behind their communications?
__How would your customer react if your letters did not give them a good feeling, were impolite, too direct or too demanding?
__Your company’s profits are directly connected to your efficiency. Let me explain this with one of many true stories I see every day; “One day while working at company, I noticed a person having trouble entering data on a computer. I enquired what the problem was and they told me they did not know how to correctly enter a sentence in English into the computer. I looked and helped them. The sentence was 7 words long. It took the person approximately 4 minutes to think about and write that simple sentence. What they had written was not what they wanted to say and actually meant something totally different” This may not seem important, however and firstly, it could have resulted in an incorrect instruction being entered, which would have resulted in reworking costs at a later date. Secondly, this sentence should have only taken 30 seconds of that person’s time, not 4 minutes. Multiply this very small incident by 100 employees over 5 days and you have an inefficiency cost of 30 man-hours per week! Finally, this instruction, if it had not later been detected, could have resulted in a dangerous situation.
And the story continues. Many people say that the people they communicate with are not native English speakers, therefore their level of English is good enough. However, is this really justification? Would this really hold water when discussing a claim with an insurance assessor? Is this really what ISO9100 asks for? This comment, if all the other questions are satisfactorily answered, it is still not a solution for the inefficiency costs many companies are subject to every day.
English language training is not a cost in your company it is a need. It is a need in your company and a need in the industry. It is a way to meet the challenge as English grows as the international communication medium.
And finally, the improvement you will obtain in improved efficiency will far exceed any expenditure you make in Language training, remembering also, this expenditure is tax deductible against profits.
Robert P. Phipps
Senior Trainer / Manager
www.Hamburg-English.de
www.Onlineenglish.de
Would you like to learn more about Robert Phipps?
www.robert-phipps.com

Dear Mr. Phipps,
this is a pretty naive way of doing comercials.
You are posting in a quality management forum, not in a beginner's english forum. And giving a comercial text a pseudo ISO backgrount does not make the whole thing look a bit different then being a - not well thought through - piece of obvious beginner's marketing.
Best regards,
Tim Gerde

I see you have looked at my email/website addresses and added 2 * 2 and made 5.
Advertising this is not. I am just trying to awaken the industry of quality to the facts of language.
Facts regarding efficiency, facts regarding possible insurance claims, AND FACTS REGARDING QUALITY !!
What is quality if everyone can say it is a matter of interpretation?
As for your comments, I find them quite insulting. This shows me that in fact your are the beginner with possibly very little experience.
thank you for your comments.
: ISO9100:2001 (D)
: Quality Management Systems.