QUALITY MANAGEMENT - ISO 9001:2000
What is ISO 9001?
ISO 9001 is a standard for identifying the control of a quality management system. It is an international standard subscribed to by the UK, USA, Japan, Europe and most of the rest of the World.
Its purpose is to demonstrate an organisation's commitment to meeting customer requirements and work towards customer satisfaction through continuous improvement and to error prevention.
ISO9001 helps an organisation introduce the tools to implement and maintain continuous improvement programmes that will ultimately translate into good product and service quality.
ISO9001 is common sense written down and provides the framework to manage, co-ordinate and control all aspects of the business.
The standard contains clauses identifying areas of any business that the Company should consider when developing a management system.
ISO9001 implementation is an investment into the future. Its disciplines create a useful structure from which continuous improvement programs can be implemented and progressed. The monies spent on implementing and maintaining the disciplines of ISO9001 are recovered when the organisation uses the standard as intended...a tool for continuous improvement. The full benefits of introducing such a system can take time to be fully realised.
Changes Made When The 2000 Version Was Issued
The latest version of the standard has made some significant changes:
- Continual improvement
- More customer focus
- Easier for non-manufacturing companies to understand and interpret.
- Requirements to obtain customer/user feed-back.
- Process approach
- Requires a documented system as opposed to a set of procedures.
- Supports “CE” Marking when a Quality Management System is required.
The Previous Quality Assurance Standards were BS EN ISO9001/2:1994 and Formerly EN46001 for medical devices (Now 13485). The previous versions of ISO9001 were discontinued in December 2003.