ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems
ISO 9001 sets out the requirements for a quality management system (QMS) – being an international standard means that references to it are accepted and understood globally. Designing, developing, implementing and maintaining a QMS that complies with the requirements in ISO 9001 ensures that your organisation manages its resources to best effect to deliver quality across its activities. It enables your organisation to benchmark your performance and take comfort in knowing that you are embracing the seven quality management principles.
Achieving accredited certification to ISO 9001 enables your organisation to demonstrate that it meets the requirements of the Standard, joining in excess of 1.1 million others that have achieved certifications worldwide. As such it’s the most widely adopted ISO management system standard.
ISO 9001:2015
All management system standards are reviewed periodically: ISO 9001 was last updated in 2015, ensuring it remains relevant and reflects current thinking in light of technological and other developments.
International management system standards in general have matured over recent years, moving away from the ‘document everything’ approach to a more efficient and effective business tool. The 2015 version of ISO 9001 reflects this, and when adopted appropriately – the requirements are necessarily generic to fit any and every organisation and so can, and need, to be tailored to each organisation – helps ensure that you:
- Understand and consistently meet the requirements of interested parties
- Keep the efficiency and effectiveness of processes under review
- Use management information to inform decisions and hone your products and services to best serve the organisation and its customers
Benefits of ISO 9001 certification
Achieving accredited certification to ISO 9001 demonstrates that your QMS has been found to meet the requirements of the Standard by an independent accredited certification body. To be accredited the certification body has to demonstrate to the relevant authorities that it is independent, has the required competence, practices and arrangements to provide confidence in the certificates it issues. In turn this demonstrates that the QMS reflects global good practice for managing quality.
Get started with ISO 9001
Deciding to adopt a QMS is a strategic decision that will help an organisation improve its overall performance and customer satisfaction, while increasing the efficiency of operational processes. IT Governance offers a vast range of services and tools to help organisations of all types and sizes design and implement an ISO 9001 conforming QMS.
Research
You can start with a pocket guide to help inform your decision to embark on an ISO 9001 project. In addition feel free to talk to an expert if you have questions about how to get started.
Implement
IT Governance has developed a series of management system toolkits to take some of the pain of the project away – whilst a QMS is not all about documentation there is some that is mandated, and some that simply helps – we have one for ISO 9001 in the form of the the ISO 9001:2015 QMS Documentation Toolkit will save you time and money when implementing an ISO 9001:2015-compliant QMS, providing pre-written templates for you to adapt and adopt as appropriate.
Transition from ISO 9001:2008 to ISO 9001:2015
If your organisation is certified to ISO 9001:2008 and you would like to transition to the latest version of the Standard, we suggest using the following tools:
ISO 9001 2008 to ISO 9001 2015 Conversion Tool
This tool aims to identify the changes to ISO 9001:2015 and to provide guidance on adapting an existing ISO 9001:2008-compliant quality management system into an ISO 9001:2015-compliant quality management system.
Consult
IT Governance consultants use methodologies and tools that have been developed and honed over 10 years.
Our free, initial, no-obligation assessment will give you an overview of where you are against the requirements of ISO 9001, and of the steps required for success. It will include a fixed-price proposal that will enable you quickly to assess the value of using IT Governance to help you achieve ISO 9001 certification.
Nine good reasons for using the IT Governance consultancy service to assist your ISO 9001 project:
- Our free initial assessment enables you to assess where you are (after all, you probably already meet many of the requirements) and identify how you can progress with us to success.
- Our fixed price consultancy enables you to control all the costs of achieving certification.
- Our implementation approach and methodology is pragmatic, proven and straightforward.
- We help you increase internal buy-in by leveraging your resources to achieve your certification/conformance goals.
- We focus on transferring knowledge and skills to you and your staff so that you can continue meeting compliance targets after the initial implementation period ends.
- We are a one-stop shop with comprehensive and integrated ISO9001 resources:
- Experienced consultants.
- Quality management expertise.
- Project management expertise.
- Trainers and training course.
- Books and tools.
- Recruitment and support.
- We help tailor your Quality Management System so that it suits your requirements, is cost-effective to operate and still continues to meet ISO9001 requirements.
- We can link your ISO9001 Quality Management framework with your health and safety, environment and information security management frameworks.
- Our simple, 'no quibble' 100% guarantee of successful certification removes all worry.
Find out more about our ISO 9001 consultancy services >>
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