Quality management systems
The ISO 9000 series of standards, which describe a quality management system model, are designed to help organizations consistently provide customers and other stakeholders with products or services that meet their requirements and expectations. This series of standards was created by the committee of the International Organization for Standardization – ISO; based on these standards, National standardization organizations can develop national analogues.
The ISO 9000 standard defines the main regulations and principles of quality management that create the basis for the development and maintenance of a quality management system, the specific requirements for which are formulated in the ISO 9001 standard.d.
Organizations that have the goal of recognizing their quality management system can use this standard for independent evaluation and to demonstrate compliance with contractual requirements.
Organizations can receive an independent external assessment from a third party, the certification body, by passing an appropriate audit. More than a million organizations around the world have certified quality management systems, confirming the effectiveness of the ISO 9001 standard as one of the most common tools for building a management system.
The ISO 9000 series includes:
ISO 9000 standard-Basic guidelines and dictionary. The standard is designed to establish a unified understanding of the terms and concepts used in the ISO 9000 series standards.
ISO 9001 standard-Requirements. The standard defines the requirements that organizations ‘ quality management systems must meet. Being general and universal, the ISO 9001 standard is applicable to any business, suitable for all organizations, regardless of the field of activity, size, form of ownership, geographical location.
ISO 9004 standard – Recommendations for improving activities. The standard contains recommendations based on eight principles of quality management, which were developed for managers to improve the organization’s activities and meet the requirements of all interested parties.
ISO standards are structured in such a way as to be easily integrated into the organization’s existing management system in order to meet and anticipate the requirements and expectations of consumers. Due to the fact that the latest version of the standard, which came into force in 2015, was developed taking into account the so-called high-level structure that underlies all the most commonly used standards defining requirements for various management systems of organizations, ISO 9001 has become much more easily compatible with such, for example, standards as ISO 14001 (requirements for environmental management systems), ISO 45001 (requirements for Occupational Health and safety management systems), ISO 39001 (requirements for road safety management systems), ISO/IEC 27001 (requirements for information security management systems), ISO 20000 (requirements for IT services management systems) and others.
Benefits of implementation and certification:
- increase customer satisfaction by meeting their requirements;
- improving the efficiency of the organization’s internal processes;
- continuous improvement of the organization’s processes by identifying and eliminating losses in the implementation of activities;
- improvement of internal communications, planning mechanism and distribution of material resources;;
- increasing staff motivation through transparency and clarity of functional responsibilities performed;
- enriching staff knowledge in the field of quality;
- reduce costs by increasing productivity, improving the quality of products, services provided, and reducing the level of defects;
- continuous improvement of the organization’s activities through the use of modern quality management tools;
- improving the organization’s competitiveness in the national and global markets.