The Five Main Sections ISO 9001
ISO 9001 can be a tricky topic to understand, in the sense that quality is something that every business surely looks for when delivering their product and service anyways. However, something that a business would need to understand is that actually, quality is something that needs to be engraved across the whole business, in areas that you might not even think to ensure. This is why larger companies may have requested that you have achieved the ISO 9001 certification; they want a company who takes pride in their whole business, meaning that there is no reputational or cost risk to themselves for working with your company. Read here for the main five sections where you ensure your quality and what ISO 9001 helps you to improve across your organisation.
Your Leadership and Management
For senior management, ISO 9001 provides a structured framework that emphasises leadership and accountability. The ISO 9001 standard calls for managers to take an active role in the quality management system(s). This can include defining clear objectives, setting measurable quality goals, and taking responsibility for the results. A leader should after all set the standard and get everyone going towards the goal within a company and they should outline how to achieve it. ISO 9001 encourages management to set clear quality objectives that align with the company’s strategic goals. This alignment helps in building a culture of continuous improvement and aligns quality management efforts with overall business growth. A leader also makes the data driven decisions; this means that regular monitoring and measurement of quality metrics, management can base decisions on data, leading to more informed strategic planning and operational improvements. Compliant does this themselves with our team being incredibly close nit, with our Managing Director outlining their goals and vision to all of our team regularly and also speaking real and personable with all of our employees.
Operations of your Organisation
The operations of your company goes far beyond producing and delivering your product/service; it is about your customer experience as a whole. This includes your customer service and how well you ensure those standards legally; after all, you have a duty to meet legal standards as well as customer standards. This includes your communication with your customers throughout, resolving any issues they may have and building that trust to customers which will keep their faith in you as a company (this can improve your repeat sales also).
However, operations of your company of course includes your production and operations teams. ISO 9001 provides guidelines to those teams, that ensure processes are. With a strong focus on quality control, ISO 9001 encourages consistent monitoring and measurement of production activities. This helps identify and reduce errors, defects, and waste, lowering production costs. It also helps your efficiency in your supply chain, by establishing criteria for selecting and evaluating suppliers, ISO 9001 improves the reliability and quality of materials received. This contributes to smoother production cycles and higher-quality outputs. ISO 9001 also includes requirements for monitoring and maintaining resources, which ensures that equipment remains in optimal condition. This minimises the risk of breakdowns and interruptions, leading to more reliable production schedules.
Compliant ensures its operations by setting aside direct and clear schedules for our week ahead, meaning that all of our employees do not get distracted or overwhelmed, so we can ensure the best possible standards throughout; it is our motto to set the standard, so it is imperative we set the standard.
Context of your Organisation
As an organisation, you must consider the context of your organisation, as to what your quality needs to be set at, and how this will impact your organisation. This means that ISO 9001 requires organisations to consider both the internal and external issues that can impact their strategic objectives and how they plan their quality management system (QMS). Your organisation should focus particularly on factors and conditions that can affect your products, services, investments and stakeholders. This could include your location, with national laws potentially differing to international laws, or it could be your competitors; do you uphold the same, if not better, standards to your competitors? This is why the context of the organization in ISO 9001 asks you to really consider the organisation’s context; you are required to meet needs and expectations of stakeholders. You must of course identify which parties are interested, which could include customers, partners, employees and suppliers; anyone who could impact your ability to consistently provide a product or service that meets your customers’ needs and any statutory requirements and regulations.
Compliant considers this themselves by standing out to competitors by being ISO certified to five different standards themselves, which helps us to not only certainly meet our industry’s standards, but also in the sense of meeting international standards that the ISO certification ensures.
Supporting your Network
Something that you may forget about, if your job is getting done anyways, is the actual support and facilities that you are giving your employees or whether the right amount of support is given to deliver your service. This could include whether you are providing necessary monetary and physical assets, resources and systems (such as personnel, office space, logistics, working conditions, etc), or even whether your employees were given the right time and space to learn and maintain their understanding of the organisation. To ensure that your employees are equipped enough to deliver what you as a company want to, you ensure that quality is given to a high standard.
Compliant ensures its network has all the right resources necessary by providing excellent technological equipment to all of our employees, and with our employees working from home primarily, though the office space is not necessarily something for us to consider, we also allow employees to work from different locations, should they request it, to ensure their own wellbeing.
Your Continuous Improvement and Evaluation
Like all ISO standards, ISO 9001 requires you to uphold your standards afterwards, and also gives you the framework to continuously improve. This also considers your aftercare for your customers, as customer satisfaction as a very critical indicator of performance for any organisation. Customer satisfaction is used to understand how the product or service offered by the company meets or exceeds the expectations of the customers. By seeking feedback from its customers, a company can make the required improvements in its processes. The entire purpose of this section is to help an organisation determine which processes are required to be monitored and measured, how are these to be measured and how/when are these to be analysed and evaluate. It is very critical for an organisation to identify how, when and where, certain processes are to be monitored, measured, analysed and evaluated in order to check if they meet the pre-defined requirements and meet customer satisfaction. As mentioned, to maintain your certification, you must maintain all of your standards to keep it ongoing.
Compliant of course maintains our five standard ISO certifications, so that is an indicator of how we continuously improve and uphold our own standards. We also offer you as a company ongoing support after you first achieve your certification, to help you in this section, so that your standards are maintained.
ISO 9001 is much more than just a quality management standard; it’s a powerful tool that can transform every section of your business. From building a customer-focused culture to ensuring efficiency in operations, improving employee engagement, and enhancing brand reputation, ISO 9001 provides a blueprint for success. When implemented effectively, it creates a harmonious environment where all departments work together toward shared goals, leading to improved quality, customer satisfaction, and business growth. Compliant really hopes to support businesses every step of the way and to make the ISO certification process as seamless as possible. We would love to chat to you about this, so if you would like to find out more, please do not hesitate to just get in touch.
