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The Case for ISO 9001 Implementation
With over three decades since its initial publication, ISO 9001 has managed to become the landmark international standard of quality through which organizations prove that the products they produce and services they provide meet a set of reliable and internationally recognized criteria.
Globalization and competitive pressure have created an environment where organizations are required to be flexible, adaptive, and innovative. In order to survive, organizations are also often required to anticipate future customer needs and expand to markets beyond their national borders. For this purpose, rigorous compliance with international quality standards is often a requirement. However, seeing the huge popularity of ISO 9001 and the large number of organizations around the world certified against it, one cannot but ask the following questions: What makes this standard in particular stand apart from other standards? Why do organizations need to have a system in place through which they aim to achieve their objectives?
Although there are many factors that have helped create a favorable ecosystem for ISO 9001 to flourish, a major driver toward this popularity has been the need for organizations to provide their products and services with a consistent degree of quality. As organizations face fierce competition, they are not able to compete solely on low prices; they must meet a degree of quality that is expected from their customers. This ability to maintain improved relations with customers, i.e., customer focus, is the key for long-term business growth and profitability and is also one of the main aspects where the requirements of ISO 9001 are intended to help organizations.
Apart from citing it as a principle of the quality management system, ISO 9001 also requires concrete actions with regard to customer focus: ensuring that current and future customer needs are understood and met, addressing risks and opportunities that may affect customer satisfaction, and focusing on enhancing customer satisfaction (clause 5.1.2). Further in the standard, requirements for communicating with customers (clause 8.2.1) and measuring their satisfaction (clause 9.1.2) can also be found.
An important aspect to note is that ISO 9001’s requirements for customer focus, when combined with the requirements for continual improvement (clause 10.3), can provide the necessary ingredients for the organization not only to meet customer expectations, but to strive to exceed them. The desire to exceed customer expectations encourages innovation and a blend of innovation and quality can be the means through which the organization ensures its sustained success and growth.
With regard to the second question, the implementation of ISO 9001 is so desirable within organizations because, when tailored to the needs of the organization and when properly integrated within the existing business processes, it becomes a blueprint for internal efficiency: standardization of processes encourages increases in productivity, the work environment improves, and costs are reduced. Furthermore, the actions that organizations must take as part of the requirements of ISO 9001, help promote unity of purpose and a culture that results in the behavior, attitudes, activities, and processes that deliver value. Such actions could be, for example, the things that must be done by the top management in order to show their commitment with regard to the quality management system (clause 5.1): taking accountability, establishing the quality policy, communicating, directing, supporting persons, and so forth.
One area where ISO 9001 has often been criticized is the creation and control of documentation. In some organizations this was perceived as a nuisance and an administrative burden that should not exist. The documentation requirements of the previous editions of ISO 9001 may have contributed to this way of thinking, nevertheless, the intent of ISO 9001 has always been to have a documented quality management system and not a “system of documents.” Although the latest edition of ISO 9001 does contain requirements for documents (clause 7.5) that have been considered as necessary, it also grants organizations a greater flexibility to determine the optimal number of documents that allow their processes to function properly and at the same time support evidence-based decision-making. On the other side, the requirements for the control of documents are necessary to ensure that the information contained in them is reliable, protected and reflects the true situation of the quality management system.
Value added vs. non-value-added approach to the implementation of ISO 9001
In many organizations adhering to ISO 9001 does lead to improved performance and the achievement of the desired results. However, this is not the case for some organizations which fail to gain tangible benefits from the implementation. Although the success of the implementation depends on the competence of managers, culture, and approach to quality and so on and there might be a myriad of reasons why the quality management system isn’t performing properly, one thing that often can be observed is the approach that the organization has taken toward the implementation. We distinguish these as “value added” and “non-value added” approaches.
The “value added” is an approach through which the organization asks itself: “’how can we utilize ISO 9001-based quality management system to improve our business?”
With the “non-value-added” approach, on the other hand, the organization examines, “what requirements must we fulfill at a minimum in order to obtain an ISO 9001 certification?”
In other words, an organization that chooses a non-value-added approach considers the implementation of a quality management system as something that must be done in order to obtain certification but does not, in itself, add value to the business processes of the organization. In contrast, the value-added approach seeks the best method toward utilizing the quality management system in order to improve the products and services provided by the organization. The value-added approach seeks to take advantage of implementing the QMS and recognizing future benefits for the organization.
When compared, the value-added approach is much more desirable over the non-value-added approach because implementing the ISO 9001 requires financial resources, time, and effort, both at the beginning and over time, thus the maximum returns on investment should be pursued, and at its core, it is what ISO 9001 itself ultimately aims to accomplish: optimal integration of the quality management system into the processes of the organization in order to achieve sustained success.
About the Author
Enis Emini is a Training Development Supervisor at PECB. He is in charge of supervising the design and development of training courses and other supportive materials. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact him at: training.qms@pecb.com.