ISO 9001 is an international standard used for the implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS), published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The name ISO derives from the Greek ISOS – meaning something that is uniform or homogeneous. ISO’s overall mission is to facilitate world trade by promoting global harmonization.
It was with the aim of harmonizing that in 1987 the ISO technical committee published the first edition of the ISO 9000 series standards, which was called ISO 9001. Later on, several versions of this standard were published (1994, 2000, 2008) until, finally, the ISO 9001:2015 that is in use today.
ISO 9001 is an internationally accepted standard for the creation, implementation, and maintenance of a Quality Management system for all organizations, regardless of size and sector of activity, and constitutes a foundation for organizations to provide better services, achieve customer satisfaction and continuous improvement. For these reasons, it is common for organizations to use ISO 9001:2015 certification as a criteria for selecting their suppliers.
The ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System is based on 7 Quality Management principles, which are:
- Customer Focus: means directing the company’s efforts to solve problems who turn to it and being always willing to go further in satisfying Customer’s expectations.
- Leadership: the organization must manage relationships with all stakeholders to optimize their impact on performance. For this it is necessary that leaders establish at all levels the purpose and orientation for the commitment to reach the established objectives.
- People Commitment: the results obtained by the organizations are the results obtained by the people of all levels and functions that work in the organization. Hence, the importance of respecting and involving all people in the organization.
- Process approach: by determining how processes are related (which process precedes the next one, which inputs are needed for a process to be executed, and where inputs come from or are obtained from) it is possible to align processes with the organization’s purpose and direction and improve their interaction, ensuring that each process receives the necessary inputs for its effectiveness and deliver the intended outputs.
- Continuous Improvement: it is a fundamental principle as it promotes the search for the best forms of execution and, contributes to the reduction of non-conformities in the organization, and subsequent reduction of waste, mainly in the processes that interfere in the fulfillment of customers’ requirements.
- Evidence-based decision making: The use of evidence, arising from observation of facts and data collection, is essential so that decisions are not based on unfounded opinion, but on evidence.
- Relationship management: it is necessary for the organization to manage relationships with all its stakeholders to optimize the respective impacts on its performance (especially with the network of suppliers and partners).
There are several benefits of implementing the Quality Management System (QMS), regardless of the size and sector of activity of organizations. Namely:
- Improvement in the organization’s overall performance.
- Improvement in the level of transparency and legal compliance.
- Improves customer satisfaction.
- Reduces Investigation time and improves risk response.
In short, quality management based on ISO 9001:2015 meets greater production efficiency, reduces costs without compromising the quality of the products/services provided, increases customer satisfaction and trust, by standardizing internal processes, procedures and specifications.
