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OnSafeLines Free Advice on ISO 9001:2008 to Help You Manage Quality Management System Responsibilities
Given two words to describe ISO 9001:2008 most people would reply "customer, customer..", personally I would say "customer retention...", which I just favour over "reduce variation..."
ISO 9001:2008 is a widely recognised international standard for Quality Management. In today's cut throat business world where the customer is king, more and more companies in both public and private sectors are seeking suppliers who have been accredited to quality management systems such as ISO 9001:2008. It is a part of business that you simply cannot afford to ignore, more and more companies will apply a supplier approval process on their supplier chain and those without a recognised Quality Management System are likely to be overlooked for those companies that are more readily able to demonstrate their seriousness towards quality and continual improvement...
The structure now also reflects the "Plan, Do Check, Act (PDCA)" cycle, already introduced in the ISO 14001 standard and the OHSAS 18000:1998 specification. The five main sections of the standard are:
- Section four - Quality Management System
- Section five - Management Responsibilities
- Section six - Resource Management
- Section seven - Product Realisation
- Section eight - Measurement analysis and improvement
There are over 250 individual requirements in ISO 9001 that can be condensed into five key statements.
The organisation shall:
- Determine the needs and expectations of customers and other interested parties
- Establish policies, objectives and a work environment necessary to motivate the organisation to satisfy these needs
- Design, resource and manage a system of interconnected processes necessary to implement the policy and attain the objectives
- Measure and analyse the adequacy, efficiency and effectiveness of each process in fulfilling its purpose and objectives and
- Pursue the continual improvement of the system from an objective evaluation of its performance.
To produce a quality product or service organizations need to establish, document, implement and maintain a quality management system and continuously improve its effectiveness... At the end of the day an ISO 9001:2008 certificate is supposed to confirm to the outside world that an organization is continually improving both its effectiveness and its process performance, this however, may not always be the case...The standard is seen as especially prone to failure when a organization is interested in certification before quality, often the case when certification is a prerequisite of a supplier relationship rather than an inherent desire for continuous improvement.