The ISO 9001 standard and how achieve it
What is a ISO 9001 standard?
It’s an international standard for a quality management system and is part of a larger family of certifications. Its for organizations asking how to improve the quality of their products and services and consistently meet their customers’ expectations. It can be used by any organization, large or small, regardless of its field of activity and the process of achieving the ISO standard is unique for every business.
The International Organization for Standardization describes the ISO 9001 as; … a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of top management, the process approach and continual improvement.
The principals mentioned above are:
Engagement of people
Customer focus
Leadership
Process approach
Improvement
Evidence-based decision making
Relationship management
To achieve certification you first need to implement a quality management system and then ensure you comply to the demands included in the standard.
So what should a Quality Management System (QMS) contain?
There are some general requirements and then documentation requirements that needs to be fulfilled in order to claim you have a QMS according to the ISO 9001 standard.
The general requirements is directed to the organization as a whole. For example:
Determine the processes needed for the QMS and their application throughout the organization.
Ensure the availability of resources and information necessary to support the operation and monitoring of these processes.
Implement actions necessary to achieve planned results and continuous improvement of these processes.
These processes shall be managed by the organization in accordance with the requirements of this internal standard.
The documentation requirements are documentation proving that your business are following said processes, monitoring results and improving processes when necessary. But as stated by Swedish Institute for Standards; …9001 demands a “documented quality management system” and not a “system of documents”.
The document requirement can be divided into two categories; documented information required by the standard and documented information the organization deemed necessary for a well-functioning QMS. The immensity of these documents depends entirely on what type of business their intended for.
For a guideline it what type of documents should be included visit www.iso.org (english), www.sis.se (swedish) or have a look in BIP365.
Why should businesses strive for an ISO 9001 certification?
A QMS is a tool for the Management to lead and support personnel in their work. In other words, making sure that the correct tasks are performed at the correct time and with the correct amount of resources, and at the same time continuously improve and follow up.
So why should businesses strive towards an ISO 9001 certification? Besides the obvious reasons with a well-functionating QMS like increased efficiency and profit it can also help businesses through growth issues, tracking finances and identify less income bringing periods etc.
For example:
75% of businesses with an ISO 9001 certification improves their levels of customer satisfaction & loyalty.
74% av businesses acquire new customers and retain existing clients.
How could we get an ISO 9001 certification?
Of course it will require work from the organization to coordinate the work needed to gain a certification but BIP365 can help you with a large part of it. The document required structure for an ISO 9001 certification are available in the platform, processes can be presented through the Intranet or on separate pages, every change and document is tracked and personnel can be trained on new processes directly from the platform.
If you want to know more about reaching an ISO 9001 certification with the help of BIP365, contact us.