ISO 9001 - Quality Management.
What is ISO 9001 ?
ISO 9001 is an international standard for implementing a corporate quality management system (QMS). It gives companies a recognised and respected instrument to effectively and permanently increase customer satisfaction. Successful certification is therefore not just a question of improving your image, but also a crucial requirement of the market: Having a standardised QMS is the basis for establishing contractual economic relationships in nearly every industry.
As a QMS is usually the first management system an organisation implements, special challenges arise when trying to understand ISO 9001 standard requirements and ways to implement them practically.
Meeting the requirements of this standard
The standard sets out requirements for documented information and records. The documented information states how the company will conform to and meet the needs of the standard. The records provide evidence that you are actually doing what you said you would. In both cases, the documents need to be managed and reviewed regularly, and updated as required.
The good news is that the documentation required has a consistent format and layout, focused on the requirements of and echoing the terminology of the standard. Our templates do exactly that. Written by qualified auditors they are tried and tested. All you have to do is adapt a few areas of the text to reflect your own organisation.
ISO 9001 Management System Standard
The ISO 9001 standard details requirements for quality management systems and the aim of this standard is to help organisations meet internal quality standards as well as the requirements of customers and trading partners. This standard could be considered as the business management standard since it effectively covers how your business is organised and run.
The standard requires a clearly defined organisational structure with roles and responsibilities to be clearly defined with the involvement and commitment from top management. Other requirements of this standard are that documented information is controlled and managed effectively that other key resources such as staff and equipment and effectively managed and that there are clear systems in place for management of other relevant operational processes. Effective systems for ongoing monitoring, checking, dealing with problems and making improvements should also be in place. Since the introduction of the ISO 9001:2015 standard there is less emphasis on having specific documented procedures and there is no longer any requirement to have a Quality Manual with the focus on taking a risk-based approach and therefore have effective management systems in place to identify and mitigate risks..
Meeting the requirements of this standard
There are various clauses in this standard where there is a requirement to have and retain documented information so even the best run and organised company will still need to review the requirements and make sure they have documented evidence for various things like Management Review, Internal Audits and a Quality Policy.
isoassured can assist with preparation of management systems to meet the requirements of this standard – check our ISO Consultancy page for details of how we can help with onsite consultancy, remote consultancy or by using of our alpha-Z documents package to meet the requirements of this standard.
ISO 9001 Certification process
We offer a simple, smart, certification process to provide independent confirmation that your organisation meets the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard and once an audit has been completed with a satisfactory outcome we issue an ISO9001 registration certificate and authorise the organisation to display our ‘ISO 9001 Registered’ logo.
Further details on our certification service are available on the ISO Certification page.
Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification
- Achieve better scores in pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQ’s)
- Improved Internal Processes and control of services
- Improved management of suppliers / outsourced services
- Improved relations with suppliers / other interested parties
- Checks that staff training / competency / licences managed correctly
- Checks that equipment, maintenance, facilities and calibration managed correctly
- Effective systems for dealing with issues and problems
- Ongoing checks and reviews of operational activities
- Systems for improvements and continual improvement of management systems
- ISO 9001 Registered Logo for use in marketing
- Enhanced systems for getting feedback from customers / end users
- Controls over design and variations
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