ISO 9001:2015
The ISO 9000 family of standards represents an international consensus on good quality management practices. It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related supporting standards.
ISO 9001 is the standard that provides a set of standardised requirements for a quality management system, regardless of what the user organisation does, its size, or whether it is in the private, or public sector. It is the only standard in the family against which organisations can be certified – although certification is not a compulsory requirement of the standard.
The other standards in the family cover specific aspects such as fundamentals and vocabulary, performance improvements, documentation, training, and financial and economic aspects.
Why an organization should implement ISO 9001
Without satisfied customers, an organisation is in peril! To keep customers satisfied, the organization needs to meet their requirements. The ISO 9001 standard provides a tried and tested framework for taking a systematic approach to managing the organization’s processes so that they consistently turn out product that satisfies customers’ expectations.
Annual Audits
- The standard requires the organisation itself to audit its ISO 9001 based quality system to verify that it is managing its processes effectively – or, to put it another way, to check that it is fully in control of its activities.
- In addition, the organisation may invite its clients to audit the quality system in order to give them confidence that the organisation is capable of delivering products or services that will meet their requirements.
- Lastly, the organisation may engage the services of an independent quality system certification body to obtain an ISO 9001 certificate of conformity. This last option has proved extremely popular in the market-place because of the perceived credibility of an independent assessment.
The organisation may thus avoid multiple audits by its clients, or reduce the frequency or duration of client audits. The certificate can also serve as a business reference between the organisation and potential clients, especially when supplier and client are new to each other, or far removed geographically, as in an export context.
Latest news
BS EN 1090-1:2009 (8th Dec)
Grand Engineering have recently had our annual audit for BS EN 1090 and is really pleased to say we excelled ourselves – the auditor was really impressed! He quoted that “this is by far THE best steel fabricator company I have ever come across”. It meant so much to hear those words as we as a company know how hard we work in order to be the best there is! #hardworkpaysoff
