ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System (QMS) is internationally recognised as the world’s leading quality management standard and has been implemented by over one million organisations in over 170 countries globally. ISO 9001 implemented, to its full potential, becomes an invaluable asset to your organisation.
ISO 9001 contains eight key principles of quality management which is not auditable but do form the fundamental characteristics of quality management:
- Customer focus and customer satisfaction
- Leadership
- Involvement of people
- Process approach
- A systematic approach to management
- Continual improvement
- Factual approach to decision making
- Mutually beneficial supplier relationship
ISO 9001: Advantages of a quality management system
Certification under a quality management system such as ISO offers numerous benefits to small business owners.
Your business generally becomes more efficient and productive, giving you an edge over your competitors. You can also enjoy marketing benefits from ISO certification because you can reassure customers that your business follows the highest quality standards.
Here are some of the other key advantages:
- All your processes are evaluated, standardized and explained to personnel
- Training new employees is much easier
- Problems are detected more quickly and solutions are improved
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Better understanding of customer needs
- Better perception of your company
- Suppliers become more like partners
- Overall communication is improved
- Better knowledge of your company by employees
- Improved participation of employees
Internally, it helps you define clear objectives and obliges you to review them. It also improves communication by defining your processes and helps to reduce nonconforming products. Reducing nonconformities sometimes frees up capacity. ISO helps to reduce inventory through better communication and follow-up with suppliers. It also helps you address the causes of existing or potential problems through corrective and preventive actions. Overall, ISO improves task definition (who does what), motivates your employees to improve the system and mobilizes them around objectives.
