What is ISO9001?
As the world’s most popular and most commonly used standard for quality management systems, ISO9001 is best practice that an organisation follows voluntarily. It reflects a high level of professionalism.
Additionally, it can help determine how to meet the requirements of an establishment’s customers, as well as other third parties involved in their activities
ISO9001 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. A new version of the standard, ISO 9001:2015, has been launched, and will replace the current standard ISO9001:2008 in September 2018.
What are the benefits of ISO9001?
The standard allows:
- You to become a more consistent competitor in your marketplace
- Better quality management helps you meet customer needs and increase customer satisfaction
- More efficient ways of working will save time, money and resources
- You to streamline your business processes and continuously improve them.
- Motivate and engage staff with more efficient internal processes
- Win more high value customers with better customer service
- Build a positive image and broaden business opportunities by demonstrating compliance with internationally recognised quality standards. This, in turn, is often a requirement for customers and suppliers to do business with you.
What are the main differences between ISO 9001:2008 and ISO9001:2015?
- The most noticeable change to the standard is its new structure. ISO 9001:2015 now follows the same overall structure as other ISO management system standards (known as the High-Level Structure), making it easier for anyone using multiple management systems.
- ISO9001:2015 has got ten clauses instead of eight. The first three are similar, however clauses 4 onwards are now arranged according to the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act).
- Context of Organisation
ISO9001:2015 expects you to understand your organization’s context before you establish its Quality Management Systems (QSM). This means an organisation is expected to consider the external and internal issues (such as external environment, internal culture, values and performance) that are relevant to its purpose and strategic direction and to think about the influence these issues could have on the QMS and the results it intends to achieve.
- Leadership
Top management are required to demonstrate they engage in key QSM activities as opposed to simply ensuring these activities occur. This further reinforces the ISO9001:2008 requirements for top management to be able to demonstrate they are actively involved in the operation of their QSM.
- Planning
The organization will need to plan actions to address both risks and opportunities, how to integrate and implement the actions into its management system processes and evaluate the effectiveness of these actions.
- Change in terminology
Benefits of the new version?
- Puts greater emphasis on leadership engagement
- Helps address organizational risks and opportunities in a structured manner
- Uses simplified language and a common structure and terms, which are, particularly, helpful to organizations using multiple management systems, such as those for the environment, health & safety, or business continuity
- Addresses supply chain management more effectively
- Is more user-friendly for service and knowledge-based organizations
Are you certified to ISO9001:2008? What are your next steps?
If you already have an ISO 9001:2008 quality management system, you do not have to discard your existing procedures and documentation and you can use it as a structure for your crucial documentation.
You will need to transition to the new 2015 revision by September 2018 as the new standard will replace the existing one in October 2018. Up until then the standards will run side by side.. Remember, this is a cut-off date set by UKAS for all the organisations to have the transition completed. In reality, it means you should aim to have the conversion finalised by May/June 2018 at the latest! It is the company’s choice which standard they are certified to but some certification bodies are stating they expect their customers to have moved over to the new standard by the end of 2017.
So if you are looking to gain certification during 2017 or if you are renewing we recommend that you move to the 2015 now.
How can Momentum Partnership help your company?
Momentum Partnership will provide you with a customised system that is guaranteed to give you a fully UKAS compliant ISO9001 Quality Management System (QMS). All of our systems are designed to allow progressive integration of other standards within a common framework.
Your system development, implementation and ongoing support are in safe hands with us.
Our 100% success rate since 1997 says so!