5. Conditions for success

Like any business project, the implementation of a quality management system entails risks that should be identified before any commitment is made.

In this respect, it is important to learn from experience, particularly with the application of the 1994 version of the ISO 9000 standards. Awareness of what others have done wrong can be a useful preliminary step in raising internal awareness and providing information, particularly to senior management.

Some of the drifts and slippages associated with the application of the ISO 9000 series of standards can be summarized as follows:

• perfectionism: a perfect quality system... on paper (theory);

• bureaucracy: a documentary cathedral (archives) ;

• Taylorism: documents describing every...