Importance of ISO 9001 Certification in Textile and Clothing Industry

The ISO 9001 standard is internationally known for promoting the best practices of quality management in businesses, regardless of their type and size. It is widely accepted by mainstream businesses including retail, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, healthcare, and so on, because it helps to assure quality, efficiency, and consistency of their products/services. This article specifically focuses on the importance of the ISO 9001 certification to textile and clothing manufacturers. They operate with a vast number of confounded activities for which it becomes difficult to maintain consistency in their products and ensure quality.

Many textile and clothing manufacturers seek to implement a quality management system (QMS) maintaining the ISO 9001 standard’s guidelines because it helps to enhance the quality of their output. This ultimately results in increasing their customer satisfaction and improving sales.

ISO 9001 is an effective tool for quality management in the textile industry for a number of reasons.

Organization of the QMS Processes

One of the crucial requirements of the ISO 9001 standard is documenting the QMS structure and how it works to improve the processes of manufacturing, from beginning to end. Documentation of the QMS is quite comprehensive. Everything including the sourcing of raw materials, job roles of the personnel regarding quality assessment at different stages, and testing of the final products and after-sales services, are tracked and recorded by the QMS. When everything is tracked, there are fewer chances of mistakes, waste of resources or raw-materials, or negligence in any process.

Ensuring Customer Satisfaction

An ISO 9001 based QMS is primarily focused on ensuring customer satisfaction. When customers are pleased with your products, they are willing to come back again for repeat purchases. While satisfying customers is always the key to successful businesses, ISO 9001 helps you to put customers at the forefront. ISO 9001 requires textile manufacturers to implement a tracking system that proactively reviews customers’ feedback, enquires, complaints, recalls, or refund issues. It helps them to more easily identify the manufacturing defects and substandard products so that they can correct them.

Product Design Controls

The QMS also takes care of designing and development of process of various textiles. The process includes how the final products are finally conceived i.e., brought to final shape using the inputs to design, cut, tailor, and fit. The ISO 9001 standard requires the manufacturers to formalize and govern the process so that errors in product design are prevented.

Company Management Reviews

To achieve and maintain the ISO 9001 certification, a textile manufacturer needs to continuously review the QMS and measure the decided success metrics. Routine audits must be scheduled by the management team of textile manufacturing companies to evaluate the effectiveness of the QMS and eventually hold meetings with employees to discuss the findings of the audits and suggest required improvements.

Intangible Business Benefits

ISO certifications can help businesses to achieve a number of intangible benefits. ISO 9001 undoubtedly helps in establishing a competent QMS that helps to prevent quality issues and defects in the output, but, at the same time, the certification exhibits a company’s commitment to quality assurance! Textile manufacturers achieving ISO 9001 can set themselves apart from other manufacturers and also make a mark in the international markets. This greatly helps them increase their customer base and generate more sales. Other benefits include more reliance of the suppliers, investors, or creditors on a manufacturer. A textile manufacturer can acquire more partnerships from credible suppliers and attract better investments.

Any ISO standard aims at providing a set of standard practices and guidelines to businesses to prevent supplying any non-conforming and poor-quality products. The ISO 9001 certification requires the textile manufacturers to implement certain actionable practices that can prevent substandard raw-materials, errors in designing and development, and preventing quality issues in the final clothing items. The ISO 9001 certification helps manufacturers to gain the confidence of their customers and improve their trust level. Clothing and apparel are necessary items. Hence, the better quality products a manufacturer delivers, the more regular buyers it will acquire, ensuring a consistent stream of income flow.