ISO9001 - The benefits to you

Thinking about a QMS in your organisation? There are lots of benefits for operating such a system, including cost savings, competitive advantage & tighter control on processes you do day-to-day

The benefits to you and your organisation

Never considered implementing a management system to the requirements of ISO9001:2008 in your organisation? There are great benefits and cost savings when doing this, and it’s applicable to any sector and any size of business, from a plumber to an oil refinery.

ISO9001:2008 is an internationally recognised set of requirements that spell out what your organisation needs to be doing, not how to do it; furthermore it is the basis of many sector specific schemes such as TS16949 and AS9000, as well as government schemes such as the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS).

The standard identifies key areas of control that need to be considered in any organisation, namely:

• Document control
• Control of records
• Corrective and preventative action
• Internal audits
• Control of non-conformance

  

As well as systems to cover:

• Management review
• Continual improvement
• Calibration
• Handling and storage of product
• Training and competence
• Sales and purchasing
• Design (where applicable)

This may all sound elaborate but the size and nature of the system is appropriate to the scale of the operations, bigger multi-site businesses have bigger and more complex systems than smaller one site companies.

The key focus is the customer - delivering the services or products your customer wants, when he wants them. Customer complaints are considered as non-conformances and customer satisfaction is seen as a key driver in your business.

Continual improvement

Continual improvement is also a key part of the standard, ensuring your organisation improves all the time, chasing regularly reviewed top level quality objectives and targets.

Not convinced? Certification by a UKAS accredited body adds value to your business, enabling you to win more tenders and have an competitive advantage over your rivals; and at the same time saving money through the reduction and elimination of mistakes within your organisation, meaning less rework, less customer complaints and less scrap.

In my experience, any organisation that sets up a system to the requirements of this standard saves more money than the cost of implementing and maintaining it.

Which certification body?

Now that your management system has been implemented and been running for a while it’s time to get audited, so which certification body to use?

Well a word of warning, make sure the body you use is UKAS accredited, this is the government department that audits the auditors, you can check if a company is accredited by visiting the UKAS website or look out for the UKAS logo.

There are several consideration when selecting a certification body, it cannot be denied that cost is an important factor, but there are other things to consider, the type of scheme you are looking for makes a huge difference.

If you are looking for ISO standards then most of the certification bodies can accommodate you but for specialist schemes the choice can be somewhat limited. Further considerations include lead time, the certification of other schemes in your organisation and the option to combine schemes to lessen the audit time required.