BS EN ISO 900X series of quality management models have evolved over time. Back in the 1980's in the UK it was BS5750, and certainly that was "Say what you do", and "Do what you say", which I agree tended to lock down the production procedures such that any change for improvement was actually difficult to introduce, and it tended to isolate production procedures which ignored the interfaces between them and led to phrase "Yes its rubbish, but it's consistent rubbish! "
Just to be clear a "Process" can one or a collection of "Procedures"
The "Quality manual" was both a strength and a weakness because of how prescriptive it was. The standard was "procedure" focused and ignored the wider essentials such as customer focus, and continuous improvement and coherent procedures across an organisation.
As the standard morphed into ISO 900X they introduced the continuous improvement requirement, so standing still was not an option. But equally and changes also had to be properly documented to show the change wasn't a knee jerk reaction, but a properly considered and researched change that would not cause the organisation its suppliers or its customers any negative impact.
The models also changed and included the interfaces between procedures and to ensure a change in a procedure did not cause an issue anywhere else across the whole process
For a number of years I was a quality systems consultant and help to steer several well known companies through re accreditation to revised or extra parts of the standards. I retired in 2005 and since the there have been further changes to the key organisational processes the present standard ISO 9001:2015 looks at
- Organizational Context:
- Leadership and planning:
- Support and resource management:
- Operational planning and control:
- Performance evaluation:
- Improvement:
Any organisation that achieves accreditation to any of the ISO 900X standards is responsive to customer issues, and uses all of that information in its reviews of products and procedures whilst looking for continual improvements.