ISO 9001:2015 How to use it ISO 9001 is a standard that sets out the requirements for a quality management system. It helps businesses and organizations to be more efficient and improve customer satisfaction. What benefits will it bring to my business or organization ? Implementing a quality management system will help you : • Assess the overall context of your organization to define who is affected by your work and what they expect from you. This will enable you to clearly state your objectives and identify new business opportunities. • Put your customers first, making sure you consistently meet their needs and exceed their expectations. This can lead to repeat custom, new clients and increased business for your organization. • Work in a more efficient way as all your processes will be aligned and understood by everyone in the business or organization. This increases productivity and efficiency, bringing internal costs down. • Meet the necessary statutory and regulatory requirements. • Expand into new markets, as some sectors and clients require ISO 9001 before doing business. • Identify and address the risks associated with your organization. What is quality management all about ? ISO 9001 builds on seven quality management principles. Following these principles will ensure your organization or business is set up to consistently create value for its customers. With these seven pillars firmly in place, implementing a quality management system will be much easier.
The seven quality management principles are :
1. Customer focus. Meeting – 3. Engagement of people.
and exceeding – customer needs Creating value for your customers is the primary focus of quality will be easier if you have management and will contribute competent, empowered and to the long-term success of your engaged people at all levels of enterprise. It is important to not your business or organization. only attract but also retain the 4. Process approach. Understanding confidence of your customers, activities as processes that link so adapting to their future needs together and function as a system is key. helps achieve more consistent and 2. Leadership. Having a unified predictable results. People, teams direction or mission that comes and processes do not exist in a from strong leadership is essential vacuum and ensuring everyone to ensure that everyone in the is familiar with the organization’s organization understands what activities and how they fit together you are trying to achieve. will ultimately improve efficiency. More information on the value and benefits of these quality management principles, as well as some useful tips for putting them into practice in your organization, can be found in ISO 9000, which deals with the fundamentals of quality management.
organizations have an ongoing Today’s businesses and focus on improvement. Reacting organizations do not work to changes in the internal and in a vacuum. Identifying the external environment is necessary important relationships you have if you want to continue to deliver with interested parties such as value for your customers. This is your suppliers – and setting out of paramount importance today a plan to manage them – will when conditions evolve so quickly. drive sustained success. 6. Evidence-based decision making. Making decisions is never easy and naturally involves a degree of uncertainty, but ensuring your decisions are based on the analysis and evaluation of data is more likely to produce the desired result. How do I get started ? There are many ways an organization can implement a quality management system. In-depth advice is available from a number of different resources, including the publica- tion ISO 9001 for small businesses – What to do, but here are a few tips to get you started. Tip 1 – Define your objectives. Why do you want to implement the standard ? Tip 2 – Make sure senior management is on board. It is crucial that everyone – from the top down – is supportive of the initiative and its objectives. If you are struggling with this, publications such as Reaping the benefits of ISO 9001 and ISO 9001 : Debunking the myths might help. Tip 3 – Identify your organization’s key pro- cesses for meeting your objectives as well as your customers’ needs. Within each of these processes, make sure you understand your customers’ requirements and can guarantee that these are met – each and every time. This will form the basis of your quality manage- ment system. How is the standard structured ? ISO 9001:2015 (the most recent version of the standard) is made up of a number of different sections, each con- centrating on the requirements involved in different aspects of a quality management system. • Clause 0-3 – Introduction and scope of the standard • Clause 4 – Context of the organization • Clause 5 – Leadership • Clause 6 – Planning • Clause 7 – Support • Clause 8 – Operation • Clause 9 – Performance evaluation • Clause 10 – Improvement
You can preview the freely available sections
of the standard on ISO’s Online Browsing Platform (www.iso.org/obp). How can I get certified to the standard ? There is no obligation to be certified to If you do opt to get certified, the first ISO 9001, so a good first step is evaluat- step is to find a certification body as ing whether certification makes sense ISO does not perform certification. In for your organization. Although certi- so doing, you should : fication might reassure customers that • Evaluate several certification bodies.
your products and services are in line • Check if the certification body
with their expectations – and might in uses the relevant CASCO standard. CASCO (ISO’s Committee on some cases be a prerequisite to working conformity assessment) has with certain clients – many organiza- produced a number of standards tions benefit from using the standard related to the certification process. without seeking certification. ISO/IEC TS 17021-3:2013 sets out the requirements for bodies providing audit and certification to quality management systems. • Check that the certification body What is accreditation ? is accredited. Accreditation is not compulsory. While Accreditation is the formal recognition non-accreditation does by an independent party (generally not necessarily mean an known as an “ accreditation body ”) that organization is not reputable, a certification body operates according being accredited does provide to International Standards – a form of independent confirmation certification of the certifying body. of its competence.
To find an accredited certification body,
contact the national accreditation body in your country or visit the International Accreditation Forum. Other standards in the family that might help ISO 9001 is the best known of the ISO stand- ards on quality, but there are many other standards that can help you reap the full benefits of a quality management system and put customer satisfaction at the heart of your business. A few documents are mentioned here, but additional information on the full family of quality standards can be found in the bro- chure Selection and use of the ISO 9000 family of standards. • ISO 9000 contains detailed explanations of the seven quality management principles in addition to many helpful tips on how to ensure these are reflected in the way you work. It also contains many of the terms and definitions used in ISO 9001 and constitutes a useful companion document to help you build a successful quality management system. • ISO 9004 provides guidance on how to achieve sustained success with your quality management system. • ISO 19011 gives guidance for performing both internal and external audits to ISO 9001. Good internal audits will help ensure your quality management system delivers on promise and will get you ready for an external audit, should you decide to seek third-party certification. International Organization for Standardization ISO Central Secretariat Chemin de Blandonnet 8 Case Postale 401 CH – 1214 Vernier, Geneva Switzerland
