سیستم مشاوره کارشناسان برای سیستم مدیریت کیفیت ایزو 9001

The ISO 9000 quality management system has been widely accepted and adapted as a national standard by most industrial countries. Despite its high popularity and the urgent demand from customers to implement ISO 9000, some major concerns for those organizations that are seeking registration to ISO 9000 include the expensive cost and the lengthy time to implement. The purpose of this paper is to describe an expert advisory system for ISO 9001 implementation by using an expert system shell called Visual Rules Studio. This expert advisory system integrated the ISO 9001 quality system guidelines and an evaluation approach based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria into a knowledge-based expert system. By identifying the critical ISO elements and comparing the company's current quality performance with ISO standards, this advisory system provides assessment results and implementation suggestions to the organization. The advisory system has been validated by a group of quality professionals. The following contains a description of the system and a discussion of the validation results. Limitations of the system and recommendations for future research are also discussed.

In recent years, the quality of manufacturing products has become one of the most important factors that influence national and international business and economic patterns. Numerous quality standards have been developed and adopted over the years, with the ISO family of standards representing an international consensus on good management practices with the aim of ensuring that the organization can deliver the products or services that meet the client's quality requirements. The American National Standards Institute has adopted the ISO 9000 series as national standard Q 9000. The US Department of Defense developed MIL-HDBK-9000 based on the international standards (Marash, 1994). Federal agencies such as NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Food and Drug Administration have integrated the ISO 9000 standards into their contractual requirements (Miller, 1993 and Karon, 1996). The Big Three automakers and some truck manufacturers have created common quality system requirements for their suppliers, known as QS-9000 (Struebing, 1996). QS-9000 incorporates all twenty elements of ISO 9001 with industry requirements. Today, the ISO 9000 quality management system are being used by many companies and organizations as a foundation for total quality management (TQM). The standards give organizations guidelines on what constitutes effective quality management and models against which this system can be audited to give the organization and its client's assurance that they are operating effectively. In the United States, a growing number of companies are seeking registration. The number of ISO 9000 registrations grew steadily from 885 in 1992 to 35,018 in 2000 (ISO, 2001 and DeMarco, 1995). This paper describes an expert advisory system designed to help organizations in their pursuing of ISO 9000 implementation. By identifying all the critical ISO elements and comparing a company's current quality system with ISO standards, the advisory system will provide assessment results and implementation suggestions to the company. The advisory system has two main goals. First, integrate the ISO 9001 quality system guidelines and an evaluation approach based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria. Second, utilize these ISO-Baldrige criteria to develop a knowledge-based expert system.

An Expert Advisory System for the ISO 9001 implementation has been presented in this paper. The expert system identifies the strengths and areas for improvement its current quality system. The summarized assessment report given by the system generates a list of prioritized suggestions for the user's reference. Organization can prepare an improvement plan for achieving ISO 9001 registration from the report. Validation results have shown the system can successfully identify the difference between a company's current quality performance and the ISO 9001 quality guideline requirements. The advisory system provided creditable assessment advice similar to the human quality consultants. Therefore, a company can use this system as a pre-assessment tool to reduce the expense and time required to hire an external consultant. The survey also suggests this system can be used as a training tool for any user unfamiliar with ISO 9001 quality standard guidelines. This research can extend its possible application to other quality disciplines, such as Malcolm Baldrige award, QS 9000, State Quality awards, other quality system and quality audits. With the many advantages of expert systems, this system could be beneficial for various types of organizations. The development of any computer model is an ongoing process and the present ISO Advisor advisory system is no different in this respect. To that end, the knowledge-base can be extended and modified when more feedback is gained from its practical implementation. Some improvement suggestions from participants can be considered in the future study. In particular, the interaction ability for the advisory system can help multi-users within the same organization to utilize their different opinions. Second, Internet or palm pilot version of this system can provide mobility and easier access for all users.