Advantages Of ISO 9001 Standards

Successful firms are good at two things: increasing sales and reducing costs. However, these two things may prove irrelevant if the quality of the product or service is poor. ISO 9001 Standards is concerned with improving the quality of operations which can affect both top and and bottom line growth. Implementation of ISO 9001 Standards affects the entire organization by providing a transition to both a new common language and a new way of thinking about continuous process improvement. Here’s how you can bring the benefits of ISO 9001 Standards to your organization.

1. Obtain management buy-in. The most important step to any quality initiative is to obtain management commitment. This will increase both the visibility and awareness of your efforts.

2. Create an implementation team. This should include a representative from all functional areas of the organization including marketing, finance, planning, production and design. Also be sure to assign a Management Representative. This should be your strongest upper-level advocate for the success of ISO 9001 Standards implementation.

3. Communicate the goals of the program and provide training. This should include employees as well as major suppliers. The communication should be concise, tied to improving the success of current goals and objectives, and in a language in which employees are familiar with.

4. Map out the most critical processes of the current system. Use an organizational flow chart to show how information flows from the placement of an order to delivery. Compare this flowchart with the ISO 9001 system (see Resources for a link to Management Standards) and identify areas for improvement.

5. Create an implementation plan based on opportunities for improvement found in Step 4. The plan should be thorough and specific. Document each change in the process flowchart. If you already have documentation supporting your processes, use it. However, if you identify an area which lacks documentation, this should be viewed as an opportunity. Documentation is the lifeblood of continuous improvement. If you don’t already have one, create a documentation control system which manages the creation, approval, distribution, storage and disposal of documents.

6. Report out on improvements, create metrics to track improvements and repeat the process.ISO 9001 Standards is about continuous process improvements, and the success of the program is a function of both commitment and the achievement of this goal.