WHAT IS ISO 9001:2015 – QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS?
ISO 9001 is defined as the international standard that specifies requirements for
a quality management system (QMS). Organizations use the standard to demonstrate
the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and
regulatory requirements. It is the most popular standard in the ISO 9000 series and the
only standard in the series to which organizations can certify.
ISO 9001 was first published in 1987 by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO), an international agency composed of the national standards
bodies of more than 160 countries. The current version of ISO 9001 was released in
September 2015.
1. Quality Management and Customer Focus
The ultimate focus of quality management is to meet and exceed
customer expectations. This means treating every customer interaction
as an opportunity to deliver more value, increasing repeat business,
revenue and your brand’s reputation in the process.
Connect organizational objectives to current and future customer
expectations
Actively manage customer relationships for long-term success
Monitor customer satisfaction and proactively address issues
Enable direct feedback from customers to reduce the time to
respond to issues
2. Quality Management and Leadership
Unify the purpose and direction of your workforce and create productive
environments for all employees to pursue quality objectives. When
strategies and processes are aligned across all departments, you’re able
to meet quality objectives more efficiently, maximize collaboration
across business functions and coordinate your operations around risk-
based thinking. Quality shouldn’t be thought of as an “add-on” or
separate process; rather, quality should just be the norm for how the
organization operates.
Communicate your mission, vision, strategy, policies and
processes clearly across the organization
Build a culture of quality that’s rooted in trust and integrity
Recognize and reward the contributions that people make toward
organizational quality
3. Quality Management and Engagement of People
Effectively and efficiently managing quality at all levels of your
organization requires deep trust and respect for all employees and
stakeholders. Recognizing, empowering and enhancing the competence
of your people will increase their understanding of quality objectives,
maximize their attention to the quality culture and improve professional
development.
Ensure employees understand the importance and value of their
contributions
Empower people to take initiative and promote the quality culture
without fear
Conduct regular surveys to assess workforce satisfaction and
response appropriately
Celebrate identifying and fixing quality issues
4. Process Approach
A electronic quality management system ( EQMS ) includes a wide array
of inter-related processes to produce consistent and predictable results.
When all stakeholders have a deep understanding of how
the QMS produces results, you’re able to focus more effectively on
opportunities for improvement, optimize cross-functional performance
and convey confidence to partners that you’ll provide consistent quality.
Define objectives clearly and create formal processes to achieve
them
Understand process interdependencies and analyze the impact of
any changes
Address risk proactively to optimize the overall outcomes of quality
management
Involve everyone in defining and understanding your processes –
including not just your internal teams, but external parties such as
suppliers, as well
5. Improvement
Risk-based thinking and quality management aren’t one-off events.
Successful organizations focus on continuous improvement to
streamline root-cause investigations , enhance the drive for innovation
and boost your ability to anticipate and react to both internal and
external opportunities.
Educate and train all levels of employees to run basic quality
management tools and methodologies
Connect improvement considerations to the development of new
products
Deploy specific processes to execute improvement projects across
your organization
Measure the results – employee training, process improvements,
quality levels
6. Evidence-Based Decision Making
All decision making involves some level of uncertainty. But basing your
decisions on analysis and evaluation of data is the best way to minimize
risk. Evidence-based decision making will help you maximize operational
efficiency, assess process performance effectively and gain a deeper
understanding of potential unintended consequences.
Develop a centralized location for all data to provide a single
source of truth
Provide easy access to all necessary data to those that need it
Modernize approaches to analyzing and evaluating data quality
Strike a balance between evidence, experience and intuition when
making decisions
Strike a balance between evidence, experience and intuition when
making decisions
7. Relationship Management
Quality management extends beyond internal operations to include how
you manage relationships with external partners like your suppliers.
Effectively managing partner relationships will in crease your ability to
deliver value to customers, support an efficient supply chain and
enhance the overall performance of your organization.
Map out all relevant relations with suppliers, partners, customers
and investors
Define KPIs and goals for each relationship
Prioritize relationship management based on quality impact
Measure the performance of each relationship and provide
feedback to partners
