How Can You Get the Most from Your ISO ISO 9000 Certification?

 



A lot of people think that the ISO 9001 certification is just an exercise which puts documents together to show an\the auditor in order to get a certification. This is a common misunderstanding. Those of us who have worked with ISO for a number of years remember earlier versions of the ISO standard which required excessive documents with little focus on real results. Lots of managers and business owners considered this merely a basic overhead expenditure to the business with no measurable benefit. - ISO 9000

More current changes to the standard have restructured the requirements to concentrate more on improvement of business processes and have less focus on putting documents in place for the benefit of an auditor. The outcome is that achievements of certified businesses nowadays have a great impact and many shareholders, employees, customers and even the top management see this. This new "Process Approach" is a sensible way to align improvement efforts throughout the business with actual customer and business needs.

Through working with lots of companies every year in attaining ISO 9001 certification since 2000, our consultants have developed three basic rules for implementing ISO in order to attain measurable, meaningful outcome from the investment:

Businesses that implement ISO for the first time make it very complex and this is a common mistake. This results in procedures nobody looks at, records no one needs, training which doesn't impact the job. The reason behind this is usually because of the implementers of the system taking a "better to be safe than sorry" approach since they do not really understand what the auditors would look for during the audit. Besides not adding to the value of the company, this will also increase the present ISO certification cost.

Instead, a conscious effort should be made to keep documentation to a minimum and concentrate on implementing those specially needed by the business or needed by the standard.

The second guideline to implement is to focus on driving genuine improvement in the company's processes in order to improve performance for both the customers and the company. Make certain that you implement everything to support the company's operations and the needs of the customers. Businesses could tailor their QMS to particularly meet their needs and still comply with the certification's intention because the ISO standard utilize general language.

You should first find out if a specific requirement you are working with is helping your company.

Don't implement anything for the reason of just showing it to an auditor and this is the third rule. If an ISO requirement is being discussed during your implementation and a comment is made such as "I have no idea why we are implementing this but we have to do it to please the auditor", then return to rules one and two above. In order to meet ISO requirement, a flexible system must be developed and implemented to suit and add value to your company. Be sure to review your ISO processes and documentation with an eye on keeping it simple and adding business value. If you do so, your auditor will certainly be satisfied. - ISO 9000