5 Steps to Implement the ISO 9001 Certified QMS in Your Organisation

Some entrepreneurs may think that getting ISO 9001 certified is easy, and it simply requires fulfilling a series of requirements or a strict quality policy issued by the International Organisation for Standardization or ISO. However, it is a little more complex. Getting certified involves many steps, such as learning about the standard, developing and documenting a QMS, training employees before implementation, implementing it, and performing the internal audit. Each step feeds into the next, but in this article, we emphasise the implementation step.

To get ISO 9001 certification, you need to resolve all the flaws or inconsistencies in your earlier QMS, effectively improving the QMS. When designing and documenting the QMS and ensuring it’s compliance with the standard requirements is complete, implementing the documented system is the next step. The following steps will further explain this process.

Follow the Requirements of ISO 9001

ISO 9001 is a comprehensive standard with requirements for businesses regarding the procedures and work instructions to ensure quality control. Essentially, you need to learn the ISO 9001 requirements and ensure the QMS meets them.

Lead Improvements in the Quality Control Process

Before ensuring the QMS is put into action, you need to make improvements in the procedures or measures that your organisation uses for quality control. When you have a QMS that is ready to be implemented, you need to find the key areas in quality management that call for improvement. You need to make the improvements by applying the usual corrective actions and ensuring they are incorporated into the new QMS. This is how you can have a comprehensive approach towards quality management in your business, by making improvements in your existing processes and simultaneously incorporating the aspects that need improvement into the new QMS.

Employee Training

How will you ensure the proper operation of the QMS? Dealing with QMS operations includes assessing the end-to-end processes in the business, minimising risks or quality issues, resolving conflicts among the processes, dealing with customer complaints, and so on. To ensure an effective QMS that covers all aspects of a business, you need to train members of your organisation to take care of operations. Therefore, it is necessary to train the existing quality team with the improved QMS.

Conducting Internal Audits

This is a prerequisite step that will assure that the QMS is working properly and your organisation is ready for certification. An in-house or professional team of auditors will conduct the preliminary QMS audits before the final certification audit. You need to perform mainly two audits- one to review whether the documented and implemented systems are adequate, and second to check whether all the requirements of the ISO 9001 have been met in the new QMS. Passing both audits will assure that your business will become ISO certified.

Management Reviews

Management participation for reviews on the QMS is the last major step needed to get certification. The management will need to review the audit reports, monitor the QMS, and take any needed corrective actions. The role of management to address any non-conformance issues in the QMS can never be ignored.

If you are a successful business owner and waiting to get your company certified to ISO 9001 for quality assurance, follow these steps. Your QMS will be implemented and working efficiently in no time.