There are 3 different concepts involved, when it comes to ISO9000 and kin:

• Quality of the product. This is an unfortunate but inevitable mistake given the abuse of word "quality" in the ISO standards. You can produce crap, even knowingly and deliberately, and still be 100% ISO compliant.
  
  
• The spirit of ISO9000. In itself, it's not a bad idea. I'd call it "continuity and consistency" rather than "quality". You can produce crap, but you have to make sure it's up to the standard of crappiness (determined by yourself up front!) no matter what. "Our products' failure rate is 10%-90% within one year" is perfectly OK, as long as you document, how do you achieve (and test etc.) that.
  
  A good description of main point of ISO9000 I've heard once is, that in an ISO9000 certified company, one day you sack ALL the employees, hire new people, have them to read the ISO documentation, and the next day they continue all activities of the company without any visible sign of change from outside.
  
  
• The certification/revision etc. process. The inspectors don't understand the previous two points; they have no chance to judge whether the first or second is achieved. They are interested in the details they are able to check, and in fact one of the key things is to prepare them a set of testable details. "We achieve the 10-90% failure rate by setting the machine's gauge between 6 and 11". Even more. "Every morning, the personnel should check whether the machine's gauge is set appropriately". The inspector then could go down to the machine and have a look at the gauge; better, he can wait by the machine in the morning for the personnel to come and check the gauge.
  

I'd like to say, have fun, but, most of the cases, it's no fun. Honestly, if it would be item 2, I'd quite like to participate in an ISO9000-like attempt; it's item 3 (i.e. the imperfect real world implementation) which makes me sick of it.

JW

PS. Sorry for the incorrect terminology