ISO 9001:2015

ISO 9001:2015 is the most widely used international standard, which provides a framework and set of principles that provide a generally accepted approach to the management of your organization. The focus of the standard is on process management and customer satisfaction.

The ISO 9001 quality management system provides the infrastructure, procedures, processes, and resources the organization needs to both monitor and improve its performance in terms of efficiency, customer service, and best product quality. ISO 9001 certification also contributes to improving the overall functioning of the organization, solving current problems and expanding market opportunities.

Any organization that wants to increase the benefits of continuous improvement and strives for continuous improvement of its management and work process must implement and certify ISO 9001.

For more information on the issuance of an accredited internationally recognized certificate ISO 9001: 2015, contact us and ask your questions.

This is one of the most frequently asked questions, and the shortest and simplest answer is: ISO 9001 is an international standard that contains the requirements for quality management systems.

This standard is the same in every country around the world. It is therefore international, but it also exists as a national standard in several countries, and therefore, it can be found with different prefixes, such as BDS EN ISO 9001 or DIN EN ISO 9001, where EN stands for “European Standard” and BDS or DIN identify a standard from a specific country. This is where the concept of equivalence comes from, since the national standard BDS EN ISO 9001 and the international standard ISO 9001 are equivalent. Therefore, in tender notices, you may find the term “ISO 9001 certified or equivalent.” This is equivalence.

What is the ISO 9001 standard?

The ISO 9001 standard is a document containing requirements applicable to all types of organizations, designed to be as applicable as possible to organizations of any sector, size, and anywhere in the world. This is one of the reasons why it is the most widely used management system standard in the world and the most requested in tenders, as it is the fundamental basis for ensuring that a given supplier is able to deliver what is ordered.

To answer the question of what a quality management system is, we must define what quality is and what a management system is.

The definition of quality is the satisfaction of customer needs. In other words, we provide quality to our customers when we meet their needs. The point is that we must be able to do so systematically, so that customers can be confident that we will always satisfy them.

And here we come to the other element: the management system. The management system is actually a management tool, a set of documents containing an organization’s rules and the forms in which the results of applying those rules are recorded. For example, a business process, a customer order form, and a quote form. These elements are part of the system, since it aims to achieve its objectives and systematically pursue and improve them.

The systems approach considers an organization as a set of interconnected processes that interact with each other.

Through the quality management system… or, you know what? We can leave quality aside for a moment and say that it’s a corporate management system that aims to achieve quality. Or, in another way, we can present it like this: it’s a corporate management system that aims to satisfy customers. This makes it much easier to understand why it’s required in tenders. In reality, it’s a system for customer satisfaction.

What does the ISO standard actually do to satisfy these customers? It makes the organization more capable of meeting them by defining objectives and policies, assigning responsibilities, planning actions, providing resources for those actions, implementing them, and verifying whether the results have been achieved. If not, it analyzes the causes of the failure to achieve the objectives and takes action to improve them, so that the results are better next time. And all of this is contingent on customer satisfaction.

When searching for information on what ISO 9001 is, you’re unlikely to come across the requirement to “be compliant with the ISO 9001 standard.” What is most often needed is certification.

At this point, it’s worth consulting the article on the basic concepts of ISO certification. A certificate is a document that certifies the management system’s compliance with the standard’s requirements. This is where the three related concepts come into play, for which I also recommend reading the corresponding article.

What you need when searching for “ISO 9001” and what ISO 9001 actually is are two different things. This creates a kind of pun that often leads to misunderstandings.

If someone asks you technically, “Do you have the ISO standard? Do you have the ISO 9001 standard?” they’re usually not asking if you have the standard itself. Having the standard is like buying a collection of a poet’s poems: you might never open it.

In practice, “having ISO certification” means having implemented the standard’s requirements in your organization. That is, having a structured and functioning management system, as well as proof that it meets the requirements, and that proof is the certificate.

So, if we had to answer the question “What is ISO 9001?” very simply, we could say: it is an international standard that helps organizations build a management system geared towards customer satisfaction and continuous improvement, and the certificate is the document certifying the system’s compliance with the standard.

How can we define the scope of application of our ISO 9001 management system so that it is sustainable, effective when bidding and signing contracts, compliant with regulatory requirements, and easier to defend during an audit?

Some believe that the scope of activity should be defined as the business activity registered in the commercial register. In reality, this is not exactly the case, because the activity described in the management system’s scope of activity, and therefore in the certificate, must be verified word for word by auditors.

For example, if you want a certification for “trading tomatoes and peppers” and have never traded peppers, you cannot obtain certification for trading tomatoes and peppers. However, if you want certification for the vegetable trade, even if you only trade tomatoes, you are eligible for certification for the vegetable trade.

Another tricky aspect in choosing the scope of application for the ISO 9001 standard is that companies, in an effort to meet every possible requirement, often try to define their scopes (or more precisely, application areas) as broadly as possible, to include all possible options. This is not always advisable for maintaining certification, as such a broad scope can subsequently create difficulties, especially if some of the activities are performed very rarely, such as once every several years.

In this sense, a more general formulation is more appropriate, but it must not be overly generic. The scope of a certification cannot simply be “production.” Production of what? Furthermore, scopes do not necessarily have to include exact model names or very detailed specifications. Any unnecessary specificity can be limiting.

For example, if you operate in the flooring industry and specify “parquet trade” in your scope, this implies that trading in another type of flooring is outside your certification scope, which represents a net loss because the way you defined the scope is restrictive.

Of course, you can change the scope, but this could incur additional costs, especially if the change must be made quickly before a regular surveillance audit.

It is good practice to use the following wording: “Trade in floor coverings, including parquet.” This way, the term “parquet” is included in the scope, if requested by the customer, and the certification covers the more general activity of “Trade in floor coverings.”

This question is important for companies that suddenly find themselves needing a certificate, whether to participate in a tender or to respond to a customer request. Panic usually sets in: “But I need it by yesterday!”, “Oh my God, we’ll lose the tender!”.

Otherwise, if there’s no specific deadline, the answer is: do what’s most convenient for you, but don’t delay the process unnecessarily, because it could stall and other priorities could overshadow it. In this case, sooner or later you’ll find yourself in an urgent situation, which is certainly not the most pleasant.

There are two main factors that determine the time required to issue an ISO 9001 certificate:

1. When can the management system be ready?
2. How long does it take for the audit and certificate to be issued?

The first aspect depends more on the client as an organization. Even without a certified system, processes are already structured within a company, and many things are already in place without the company even being aware of it.

The requirements of ISO standards are so basic that every well-functioning organization largely meets them without realizing it. If the company operates an operational business and manages documentation related to personnel, customer orders, equipment, support, and suppliers, much of the work has already been done. For such a company, in an emergency, it’s sufficient to use a consultant (because the process is quicker) who can identify the available documentation, structure it, and prepare the documents for certification. For a small, well-organized company, the work can be completed in a few weeks.

Of course, company employees can do these things themselves, but when you do something yourself for the first time, it’s normal for it to take longer.

The duration of the ISO 9001 certification process varies based on the size of the company (number of employees, number of locations) and the speed and efficiency of the certification body’s internal administrative processes, i.e., its ability to administratively process the application, schedule the audit, have the auditors perform the audit, draft the report, submit it, have it reviewed, and issue the certificate.

For small, well-organized companies, this process can be completed in a week at Alpha Quality Certification.

In short, how quickly can you obtain an ISO 9001 certificate? If the company is small, has the typical characteristics of its business, and matters are extremely urgent, tenders typically have a response time of one month. This is an entirely achievable deadline with good organization.

But there’s a big “but.” In practice, it often happens that companies see they have a tender in a month, ask someone to collect bids, then give them another two weeks to choose, and with a week left before the deadline, they say, “Well, we really need certification”—and there’s no time left.

When things are urgent, decisions need to be made more quickly to get things done on time, because when certification is performed urgently, certain revenues for the client depend on it, and they don’t want to miss out.

If you’d like information on the time required for your organization’s certification, please don’t hesitate to contact us.