Introduction
ISO 9001 is the most famous international standard that establishes how to implement a quality management system applicable within organisations of any type, sector or size. The aim of the ISO 9001 standard is to enable the organisation that adopts it to continuously improve its organisational structure in order to improve its management, optimise costs and processes and achieve customer satisfaction.
How to achieve ISO 9001
To achieve this objective, the company will have to go through two main steps:
1) Preparation of an own quality management system
- investigate and become aware of the requirements of ISO 9001
- carry out an analysis of your company in relation to what is required by the various requirements of the standard
- structure a documented management system (generally consisting of a manual, procedures and forms) that meets the requirements of ISO 9001
- integrate and apply the system set up, making sure that all the personnel of your company are aware of it and participate in it
- carry out internal audits to verify that your management system complies with ISO 9001 and that it is effectively applied in your company
- carrying out management reviews to ascertain the degree of effectiveness achieved and to evaluate the benefits obtained by applying the management system
2) Being audited by a Certification Body
- choose a Certification Body and request to be audited for certification
- agree with the chosen Certification Body a date for the audit, which will be carried out by a Certification Body inspector at the company's premises
- during the audit, it is possible that the inspector may find shortcomings (non-conformities), in which case the company must agree on a formal commitment to resolve them
- once the audit has been completed and the resolution of any non-conformities found by the inspector has been agreed, the inspector will issue a report of conformity to ISO 9001
- within days of passing the audit, the Certification Body will issue the ISO 9001 certificate, which will be delivered to the customer
- in the following years, the Certification Body will carry out an annual surveillance audit to maintain the validity of the certification.