GA 564 | ISO 9001 and Continuous Improvement with Ridha Dhrifi

Now it's like based on more on the risk thinking, which is for me, with alignment with this Lean principle as well. So you need to be agile, you need to have this kind of think based all the time. So again, it's kind of mindset that you need to have all the time.

Today I'm excited to welcome Rita Drifi to the show. Now, I've known Rita for many, many years. He's been in a few of our GEMBA Academy's different certification programs. In fact, he's now nearing the end of his Master Black Belt certification with Gamble Academy. And while this is actually coming on this podcast as part of the program, so we had a great chat. So Rita has a strong background in various aspects of continuous improvement, obviously, but in particular, he's also very familiar with the ISO 9001 standard. In fact, he's a lead auditor for ISO. And so today on the podcast, we talk about something I don't think we've ever talked about, which is always exciting to me on the podcast, and that is sort of the relationship and the harmony between something like ISO 9001 and lean and just continuous improvement. And how do the two sort of complement one another? Are there any differences? Are there any issues? How would you get started with one over the other, depending on what your company's background is, that sort of thing. So it was a fun conversation for me. I really enjoyed it. And even if your company's not ISO certified or perhaps you are ISO certified, but you're not into Lean, I think it's going to speak to both, both parties. And, and if you're doing both, I think it'll be really interesting just to hear reader's perspective on, on how things like, I ask them, like later in the podcast, you know, sometimes the standard ISO standard might changed or updated or there's some revisions. And so like, what do you do then? And another one I asked towards the end was, how do you balance this whole idea of compliance? Like, ooh, we've got to be compliant to ISO9001 standard. How do we. But also we got to be efficient and we got to get the product out. So how do you balance those two things? And I thought Rita did a really nice job answering that as well. So show notes can be found over@gemba podcast.com look for episode 564. Also, please be sure to scroll down on this app, whatever you're listening to, and go connect with rita over on LinkedIn. And also he's written some, some papers, in fact, one of the papers that he wrote is what really influen today's episode. So be sure to check out those. Those articles as well that he wrote. So we'll have all that linked down below in the show notes. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Rita, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm super. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. So, well, Rita, we have opportunity to have some of our Master Black Belt candidates on the podcast from time to time, and. And you're one of them, so I'm really excited. I know you're nearing the end of your. Of your jo as far as becoming certified at master Black belt here, and super proud of you for that, by the way. And John Knott speaks very highly of all the hard work that you've done. So. So great job with that.

Thank you so much, Ron, for this opportunity. And this is, like, a pleasure for me.

Yeah. Wonderful. All right, well, Rita, as you know, at the beginning of all of our episodes, we like to get started with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you have?

Honestly, I have, like, a lot of quotes, but my favorite one is, like, we need all the time to stress the process. That's my, like, I would say, main code that I'm using every day here when I'm doing my job on different tasks.

So what's it really mean to you, though?

I mean, we cannot, like, don't have any structure or any, like, approach in mind. We need, like, to have this process approach in mind kind of thing that we push us to think all the time, like, what we need to plan, first of all, how we can do it this. And we need to check and monitor closely our performance. And then we need to adjust if needed, to be sure that we achieve our expectation.

Wonderful. Awesome. All right, well, Rita, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Tell us about your background, maybe how you got involved in all of this continuous improvement that we do, and then also what you're up to these days.

Yeah, of course. I think I. My name is Rida Drifi. I think I have more than 16 years of experience in terms of QA and continuous improvement, quality insurance, and continuous improvement. The first time that I was certified for was with you guys. Again, appreciate your support and your. How you just support me to get to this level of certification. The first time, I think, was in 2013. Something like that.

Was that long ago?

Yeah. Oh, my gosh, you guys. And then it feels like yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Running Fast. And afterwards I was able to. To get my master black. My black belt. Sorry, but I'm aiming to get my master black belt. I'm like actually lead auditor for Aizuna1100. And then like my current position right now is with HBS as a original quality director.

Got it, Got it. Okay. All right, well, so you've mentioned ISO9001, and I thought maybe we're going to share in the show notes here a link to this, but you wrote an article sort of comparing and contrasting and maybe talking about maybe some alignment between ISO 9001 and lean manufacturing principles. So do you want to maybe open up just about generalities about why you wrote it? I mean, I know it was part of your master black belt, you know, but. But why were you interested in this? And obviously you have a background in.

ISO, so honestly, because like, just like mentioned, I'm like certified for black belt plus I'm like certified as a lean lead auditor. Sorry for eyes on 1001. So kind of combining both of them is like kind of thing that you can benefit and you can just like make sure when you use both of them, you'll be in alignment and you'll be like, your processes will be more efficient, your expectation will be like achieved right away. And this is like super, super powerful tools. If we integrate the link in ISO9100, it will be amazing and any organization in the world can benefit of that.

Okay, now, so just in case someone listening, maybe they've heard about it, but they're not exactly sure what it's all about, tell us a little bit about ISO9001. Like what is it? Why should anyone care? You know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, of course. I think it's one of the things, to be honest with you, that I was faced when I joined them. The last company that I'm working right now is like the, the culture. Right? So nobody, as you mentioned, know about the Azure 9001 and the opposite. Some of them like have like a bad experience with the ISO9001 and they think this is super hard, like this bureaucracy and this is super hard to achieve. But what I can tell about the ISO9001 is like a structure that you can just like follow different steps and you need like to do it every time. When you just like have a process, this is what you can do. If you need like to map this and get like a clear flow, this is the structure that you need to follow. If you need to perform a new root cause analysis to analyze Any like defect that you have or any issue that you're facing. So you need to follow a couple of steps there. And this is just to make sure that you guys have in general structures, steps super clear, super simple to perform and like fall. That's it. That's I would say my General definition of ISO9001.

Now are there any industries that are more interested in exploring ISO9001 or you know, because I know there's different sort of quality programs whatnot for you know, aerospace as an example and you know, different things like this. So what's the collaboration or harmony between say 9001 and these other ones?

Yeah, I think it's like the, I would say the this is like comes from like organization in Europe. Right. So the companies there is like more comfortable are using ISO9001. Of course but in terms of industries like for example any type of manufacturing company should use this or could use this. I would say just the proper words could use this because this is not related to one of them but not the others. But I can tell that the automotive, the aerospace they using like ISO9001 and plus there is any others, many other sender. But the base of them like our ISO9001. But for example in the chemistry not much like company are using this. So that's why even like the company that I'm working for, they are not like certified ISO9001 one of the site. Yes, but not the others. Right. So that's why I'm more interested of writing this article plus start implementing this the knowledge and the structure and the benefit of the ISO9001. So in general I think the chemistry is like less company that using ISO9001. But if we talk about like the other industries, I mean automotive, aerospace, any manufacturing for electronics. Because I worked for the many companies before that they manufactured PC servers and everything. So they Azure 1001 is like the basic for them and they need to be certified fight for sure.

Now how do you make sure that a company isn't. I mean because I've, I've maybe seen some evidence of this and past lives where you know they want to have the big banner that they're ISO9001 certified and the auditor's coming and tomorrow and hey Cindy, why don't you or Jim, why don't you be busy at 3 o' clock and not at your desk in case the auditor comes by. You know, like how do you make sure that people. It's sort of an authentic, you know, real certification that's adding Real value. And it isn't just a maybe continuous improvement wallpaper.

I like your question, Ron. And this is the reality. You're right. I think it's. I cannot like deny that the Arzuna 1001 certification could be like a great tool marketing tool.

Right.

That any company can use. Right. But, but to be like 100% implemented, that's the journey. That's kind of like PDCA cycle that we're gonna like to touch base afterwards. But we need to implement it like every. Every day, every time, right. It's consistently if any step should be like any process, sorry should follow this PDCA cycle to keep it super simple for you guys. And to answer directly your question, it's everyday implementation, everyday follow up to make sure that really we implement really the ISO9001 and to check what we are doing every day to have some KPIs to monitor closely our performance and that's to make our life easier if we are an employee in this or that organization. So that's not only like the banner there, but this is like the implementation, the real implementation, very follow up after and to. To even learn from our mistakes because we have always defect. There is no 100% quality, right. All the time. So that's. They can answer your question. That's everyday work. It's every day. It's consistency.

Okay, so. Okay, well let's talk a little bit about Lean now and then. How sort of can Lean thinking, Lean manufacturing principles, how can they help or harmonize or perhaps maybe there's differences, I don't know between it and ISO9001. What do you think?

I think there's like alignment between both of them. Right. So I think as isuna001 the main focus of them is like the customer focus, right. The engagement of people, right. So the same thing in principle. There is people there, there is like customer focus that we need to make sure that our process is run perfectly. There is no waste. The Same thing for ISO 9. 1. One of the sections talk about the improvement, right? Improvement for Azure 9001 which is Kaizen and Lean principles, right? This is like super. I see both of them like in Super Alignment there's no differences. Major, I would say to be precise, major differences. Both of them talk about like clear flow, right? The vsm, the value strip mapping is like to see which added value to each task that you perform every day. Which is like the, the basic, I would say intent of the ISO 9001, especially in the their manufacturing processes. So this is, this is why I See them in perfect alignment.

So what's interesting about something like a value stream app, let's talk about that a little bit because within a lean context, you know, you might create a current, a current state value stream map and then immediately the next day or next week, the team works together to create this future state map of where they'd like to be in maybe a few months, something like this. And then they start working, you know, on the current state to improve it. Right. So it becomes the future state. How does that align with ISO principles? You know, sort of like a current state, future state. How does that all work within an ISO world?

So the ISO world or I would say the ISO standard are based on this PDCA cycle approach. The PDCA cycle is like plan, do check, act. So if I am talking about the check and act, this is what you just like mentioning. We need to check ourselves. We have some KPIs, monitor closely what we are doing, then adjust ourselves. So if we the same thing, value stream mapping, we need to map this process. We can just give it some time to work and see and see if there is a real added value to it or not by having some KPIs behind to see the performance we measure. We see the KPIs and afterwards we see if there is any gap between the target and this performance and we adjust ourselves afterwards we can even change the process based on some KPIs and this data decision that we, we, we, we can make just by having this closely monitoring.

Do you, without naming any, I don't know what you want to name any companies or anything like that, but I'm wondering if you could maybe share some examples, real world examples of, of maybe an example of a company that successfully combined this, the principles of ISO and lean. Like what did it look like when you were walking around in this facility?

Yeah, the previous company that I worked for, they were like able to combine both of them and not only just with AZOO9001, but with two others which is AIZU14001 and ISO45001. Both of them is 40,001 for the environment. The other, the last one, 45,001 was for the health and safety. So we're talking about like integrated management system for the three acts. I would say 9001, 14001, 40001. Bear with me, I know that there is a bunch of numbers there but yeah, they add like the lean they integrated to this integrated management system. When you see the shop, like visually speaking the scorecard is there, the KPIs is there, there is the live real data can see it. There is like any, any issue that you can just like see in your with your eyes visually speaking. So it will be like just sort out from the the chain of the process and they can just like start performing root cause analysis just by using some jig they call jig which is like small test equipment I would say. And this is like amazing. I mean you cannot like slow down your chain. So this part of the lean. But if you have any defect which is kind of, kind of type of waste, you can just like right away correct it. And this is exactly what this ISO9001 stands for. Don't stop anything. For just stopping the your chain manufacturing processes. You just, you have everything, you check it, you'll just correct it and you just like continue this cycle of PDCA.

So I know that within the ISO world and 9001 in particular I'm familiar with there's often updates.

Right.

Or they've revised the standard. Right. So what about that and how does that impact any aspect of Lean or maybe it doesn't, you know what I'm saying? When things are changing.

This is honestly this is like a good question too. I think it's. I never thought about this before but the update they are making for this ISO sender is like just to make it more agile. Right. And they think that's my interpretation. Right. I think like Lean is one of the principle as well. Could be like Kajal, but it could be we need to be like flexible to need to adapt ourselves. So this is my thought on this. But if you can see the last version of Ajuna 1001 which is in 2015, was it comparing to the previous one? They make it more simple. They like remove many like mandatory clauses. For example you don't need like to document everything. Right. Just before was a super heavy document. I mean yeah, kind of think you need to document everything which is like gonna create resistance to this to adopt the ISO now,001 now it's like based on more on the risk thinking which is for me with the. With alignment with this Lean principle as well. So you need to be agile in you need to have this kind of thing based all the time. So again it's kind of mindset that you need to have all the time. So that's my answer to this question. That's what I'm thinking.

Good, good, good. I'm wondering if you could give maybe some advice to. Maybe there's a quality manager listening, a plant manager supervisor, somebody like this that's, you know, maybe responsible for the processes and responsible for managing people and give them some advice on how they can balance this idea of compliance right to the ISO standard while also being efficient operationally. Right. Like we've got to get the product out and we've got to be productive and that sort of thing. So how, what are some tips to balance that whole idea of compliance with operational efficiency?

I think it's. First of all, they need like to start with the mindset and the culture in general. And they need to see this as like a tool to help people in their life, everyday task. So this is not like a tool that we need to work for the tool. This is a tool that we helping can help us to do these things, like in the better way. Efficient with more efficient. There is no waste. So if there is no waste, we're talking about more efficiency here. So they're gonna be able to produce more. And this is, honestly, this is something that we are. I face. I would say when I change the companies will depend of the culture, the level of the culture in general, but it is one of the challenges that I was facing all the time. My advice to them is to start implementing ISO9001, like section by section or like implementing small things at the beginning. Because we need to train people to change the mentality, the culture, to say, hey guys, when you document this sop, for example, which is like the example that I'm using all the time here. So if you are not here, the other employee in the second shift gonna use the same SOP just to make sure that they're gonna do the same steps. If I'm doing this same task differently than you, you will create gaps. So probably gonna affect the productivity. We're having some defect and all of that. Right. So this is my advice with them. Little by little, one section at a time. And you'll see not like super hard thing that disappear like eyes or not a house or not. No, like a structure that we need to follow. We need like to make it make sure that it's easier for everyone by having this training, changing the mentality, the having this, the mindset and that's it.

Let's say that there's a company out there who maybe they've been practicing lean for a while and they, they have a nice operation, they're doing very well, you know, visual management and that sort of thing. But they aren't ISO 9001 certified. And maybe for whatever reason they want to achieve that. They have their own whatever. Why, however they want to reason, whatever reason, I don't know, but they want to do it. What are some like you just maybe you mentioned it a little bit. Start at the beginning. But like how long do you think it will take? I know it varies from the size of the company. Let's say we have a, a facility with I don't know, 300 people and a leadership team and again they're pretty lean and pretty operationally efficient. Like how long would it take them, do you think to realize certification, ISO9001 certification before Rita comes in and says that's it, you're good.

I think it will depend, it will depend of the size but plus the culture and the company. Right. But I would say probably if they are implementing the lean principle already, they will not like taking need like one or two months. Oh, okay.

Yeah, not one or two years, right?

No, no, no, no, no. I think it's, I would just like give you some, I would say similarity. Right. So when they perform this lean assessment, this is the internal audit they have like this, the value stream mapping, sorry is the same thing when we have this flow that we need to respect in Azure 9001. So the relationship with suppliers, probably this is something new that the Lean principles talk about this but iso9001 have some, I would say additional requirement to it.

Yeah, more structure.

Exactly. And data driven decision making. Both of them like the lean have this engagement of people which is like make sure that all the employees are engaged and make sure that they are like they giving. We give them like the same training or the required training they need the continuous improvement thing. If this for Aizon 1001 it's continuous improvement. But the Kaizen workshops, so it's question of like putting this together in one. I would say papers or documentations and that's it. And afterwards we'll be like following the process of being certified, receiving an external auditor at the first and which is not an issue if they found like some non conformity you're going to fix it and learn from it, which is like a tool of improvement and you will be certified. Right. So I don't think it's. They need like much time to be certified if they implement the lean principles.

So last question. Let's say there's a company out there, maybe they are brand new to lean, they're just getting started, maybe they just heard about it, read a book, listen to the podcast, I don't know. And maybe they are not ISO certified either. Then neither one. Is there an order of operation that you would Recommend maybe they start with some lean and get some basic foundation, then seek the ISO. Or would you point them to ISO first to get that structure and then lean. What do you think?

Another good question here. So I think there is no order but me, if you asking me, I would recommend using the structure first, which is either 1001 and then developing the lean principles, which is by doing this, of course you're doing like part of the others, you know what I mean? So this is me. I'm just like looking for the structure which is like covering more and I still lean principle into ISO 9001. So this is my advice to them. But it will depend of of course of the engagement from the leadership and what their expectation if they would like to be right away certified and then implement lean or no lean and gaining some, some like efficiency first and then we will take care of being certified for ISO 9001.

Yeah, spoken like a great ISO auditor, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. Awesome. Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun, Rita. Hey, if people wanted to connect with you personally, what's the best way? LinkedIn.

Something like that. Yes, LinkedIn. LinkedIn. They can just like even see my two articles that are like fresh that I just like published recently, like one or two weeks before. And yeah, guys can just like leave my name here and you can just like see my page on LinkedIn.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah. And we'll have everything linked in the show notes, so everybody just scroll down. If you're not connected with Rita, please, please go connect with him. And yeah, and so the papers are shared on your LinkedIn account.

Yes, okay, perfect.

They can find them there and maybe we'll get them and put them as a link in the show notes as well just in case people aren't on LinkedIn. So. Okay. All right, well, hey, thanks again for coming on Rita. And again, congratulations on the. Maybe by the time this episode comes out, you'll be certified already.

So. Yeah, thanks a lot for you. For Don, my coach, I think he was pushing me like to be for good reason. I think I learned a lot from you guys and I appreciate the time that I just like vote for me, especially when I start everything with you guys and it's amazing process. I advise everyone if you're like fan of this lean manufacturer things and to be certified for the Six Sigma, I think Gimba Academy for me was, was one of the best, the best academy. I learned a lot of things. I was able like to do, to watch my videos, to do all the exam in the Agile way, in the flexible way. And like, again, I appreciate and thanks a lot, guys.

Oh, well, thank you. All right. I appreciate it. All right, well, great job, Rita. And. And take care. Okay.

Thank you so much.

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