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One of my job best quality experiences was at a Japanese company in the 80s. The company had an ISO program and also had a quality program that they called the New Production System. This system was based on the widely used principals that were originally taught by Deming and then optimized by companies like Toyota as the TPS. This philosophy is also called Lean manufacturing.

At this company, the emphasis of the ISO program was consistency and documentation. The emphasis of the NPS program was measuring, improving and quantify the product quality and production efficiency. It is difficult to refine a process that is not consistent so ISO9000 was a key element to the overall quality system. This company had an outstanding quality reputation and outstanding quality to back it up. I attribute much of this to the NPS so I would like to share some of the basic principals for anyone who is looking to go beyond the minimum requirements compliance to the standard and strive for exceptional quality products and processes.

Volume has a big effect on the emphasis on quality, Companies that build product in the tens of thousand have all learned (or gone out of business) that a quality failures are very expensive. One return won’t kill a company but 10,000 returns will. The companies do things like have a formal product release for all new products. They don’t ship prototypes to customers or ship product that is not proven. This company was rare because they build high-mix low-volume products but built them to the same standard as higher production product. It worked here and it can work at any company that is serious about quality.