Rating: 
Summary: Not all that it says it is
Review: Much of the book's explanation of the standard is pretty much a repetition of the words stated in the standard itself so it doesn't add much value and can be quite confusing at times.The author also fails to explain some very important points of the standard. One example are the clauses on product "verification" and product "validation". These two terms have very different meanings in the standard. The book fails to explain their differences as well as their exact purpose. I also noticed a number of typos in the text. There is a section in one of the later chapters of the book that, I believe, was not updated because it still used the word "Supplier" when it meant "Organization". As for the free quality manual, I would not recommend using it. It does not apply for small businesses and the structure is not that comprehendible. The scary part about this is that the author went as far as saying the reader can immediately use the free quality manual by just replacing the sample company name with the reader's own! That sounds a lot like a get-rich-overnight scheme. It never works. You'll have satisfied ISO 9001:2000's requirement to document your procedures, but as for its requirement to implement and maintain it...I highly doubt that's going to happen if you use the sample manual as is. I'd go for ISO 9001:2000 explained (second edition). Apart from the fact that the authors were members of the group who actually made the standard, the text is very clear and easily understood.
Rating: 
Summary: Accessible to the novice and easy to read.
Review: My organization has decided to become ISO 9001:2000 compliant. This is of course a necessity for a midsized consultancy that is growing by leaps and bounds. Having read two books before this one I can say that this book is accessible to novices and provides the necessary direction.
In addition to the accessibility, this book is a must read for those businesses that are not large corporations with a QMS of some sort already in place.
Rating:
Summary: Good Reading
Review: The book ISO 9001: 2000 for Small Businesses, is excellent reading. It is very helpful for smaller organizations trying to implement ISO, I am in the process of doing the same. However I think the author does not give enough emphasis on the flexibility of the new standard, neither give clues on how implementing the standard is going to help the organization function better. The Sample quality manual is helpful, I would not go as far as using it as a template and customizing it, because it will effectively translate into tricking your own self (The standard was envisioned to help give companies a tool to work better, and is very flexible/generic to help tailor it to ones own needs). But it is an excellent starting point for novice implementers of any QMS, to understand what a QMS looks like when its ready. The documentation is brief and covers most of the clauses in a structured manner. All things considered I think the book is good quality :)
Rating: 
Summary: One of the best ISO reference books I've seen to date!,
Review: This book takes pride of place amongst my ISO reference books. The book is extensive in its coverage and manages to be informative in plain english, a rare occurance in this field. The Author has not only produced a first class reference book but provided a service by making himself personally available to his readers.
The example Quality Manual section of the book proved invaluable when I came to carry out a sanity check on our QMS, highlighting areas for improvement.
Since purchasing this book I haven't picked up another, congratulations Mr Tricker, a job well done.
Rating:
Summary: Thank you!
Review: We decided to purchase a copy of this book (as opposed to the many others that are available on this topic) as a direct result of having read the Amazon.com reviews. Not only does 'ISO 9001:2000 for Small Businesses' provide an exceeding informative, very clear and easy to read explanation of the aims of the new standard, it also gives purchasers the added bonus of being able to download an example of a generic QMS that they can quickly customise for their own use. We certainly have not regretted this decision to buy the book as it has saved us literally hundreds of hours of work and enabled us to quickly upgrade our previous procedural ISO 9002 system to the ISO 9001:2000 process format. With the aid of this book we successfully achieved this conversion with minimum cost and were successful in becoming Registered to ISO 9001:2000 at our first attempt! The author also provided us with an e-consultancy service on the lines of a HELP Desk, which must have saved us thousands in consultancy charges. All in all, 'ISO 9001:2000 for Small Businesses' has been far and away the best book we have every purchased. Thank you Amazon.com and thank you Ray Tricker!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! - Great Value!
Review: We purchased this book to get a basic understanding of ISO 9001: 2000 and an idea of how much effort would be required to implement a QMS in our small injection molding shop. This book along with being able to download an example QMS convinced us that starting and implementing an ISO System could be accomplished even though we are a very small company with limited resources. It appears the generic QMS (excellent!) can be easily be modified to work for our manufacturing operation and will save us a bunch of work! An impressive book - thanks, Ray!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! - Great Value!
Review: We purchased this book to get a basic understanding of ISO 9001: 2000 and an idea of how much effort would be required to implement a QMS in our small injection molding shop. This book along with being able to download an example QMS convinced us that starting and implementing an ISO System could be accomplished even though we are a very small company with limited resources. It appears the generic QMS (excellent!) can be easily be modified to work for our manufacturing operation and will save us a bunch of work! An impressive book - thanks, Ray!
Rating:
Summary: An absolute lifesaver!
Review: We were in the process of changing our current quality system to the Y2000 version of ISO 9001 and had employed a firm of consultants to help us set things up. Unfortunately the consultancy costs kept on escalating and instead of producing an updated version of our existing system, they seemed bent on making us conform to their "off the shelf" system. Although it had already cost us a lot of money in consultancy fees we decided to try to get rid of the consultants and try to develop the documentation ourselves. Although there are a lot of books on the ISO 9001 standard, most of these don't fully describe the standard and appear to only be a sounding board for the author's views on his/her own experiences of management. Little more than a repeat of their previous work. It was, therefore, very refreshing to come across the no nonsense approach to this new standard as shown in Ray Tricker's book, "ISO 9001:2000 for Small Businesses". Having described how the new process approach of ISO 9001:2000 is intended to work and explained the content and inter-relationship of process documentation, the majority of the book consists of an example of a complete Quality Management System (consisting of a Quality Manual, Quality Procedures and Work Instructions) that covers all the recommendations and requirements of ISO 9001:2000 and which can be easily customised to suit any business whether a small corner shop or a large conglomerate. Best of all, however, is the author's very generous offer to supply a free softcopy of this his generic QMS to anyone who has purchased the book. Having taken up this offer, we were even more delighted to learn that the author was also willing to assist us in cost-effectively setting up our system by being available (on-line) to answer questions regarding his generic QMS, how to adapt it in practice and helping us with some of the general questions about quality. We were thus able to complete all of the work internally and (very importantly) at our own pace. We have now fully updated our processes and sailed through our first ISO audit without a problem. For companies wishing to save money, I have no hesitation in recommending this book, it is an absolute lifesaver!
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