As it’s the season for tradition let's look at how design has changed over the years, and how this might have effected elf based manufacturing.

When ISO 9001 was first published in 1987 there were 3 versions of the ISO 9000 series (9001, 9002, and 9003). ISO 9001 addressed design, 9002 production, service and installation, 9003 testing and inspection. I can only assume that the elf based artic manufacturing facilities would have been early adopters of all three standards, considering their position as global leaders of FMCG production.

Design has changed a lot since the 80s, whereas traditionally it was interpreted as traditional products, in its latest iteration it has made service a specific function of design.

Production elves are great at identifying customer requirements (Christmas toy trends), and translating these into designs for production. With 2.2 Billion children on Earth, we must tip out collective hats to their ability to refine designs, set technical specifications and ensure adequate resources, testing are in place.

This brings us on neatly to the later years of ISO, and an area that, Father Christmas and his elves, again must be global leaders in service provision, delivering to 21 million children an hour demonstrates a level of service even Jeff Bezos would struggle to achieve. This raises a very valid point, in 2020 ISO9001 is still wrestling with the service element of the ISO standard. Although service design is considered by auditors and implementors, is it given the time and resources that Father Christmas and Jeff obviously demand?

A tip that I use, to deliver the best bang for buck with ISO is to consider the 3 main groups when considering design in organisations:

1. Product Design: this goes without saying
2. Customer Service Design: are you providing the best possible service provision?
3. Internal Customer Service Design: the best systems treat internal teams as customers, by giving the next group in the process the best service, this will create a top quality service internally and externally.

Returning back to Father Christmas and his Elves, not only are they designing top notch products, but the internal workflows must be incredibly slick, embedded, and efficient to provide what is an incredible design, production and logistics operation with a single 26 hour delivery envelope.