Northeastern Univ. A Cappella

Understanding ISO Certification and How To Get Your Organization Certificated

ISO means international organisation of standardisation. This provides a collection of standardized prerequisites for a quality management system irrespective of what the user organisation does, the organization’s size, or whether it’s a private or public organisation. It is meant to help organizations to be sure that the requirements of customers and other stake holders are met. ISO certification isn’t a mandatory obligation for establishments rather it’s self instated. ISO certification has a considerable number of advantages like the genesis of more effective and efficient operations, an increase in consumer satisfaction, an improvement in worker contentment and morale, the promotion of world trade, and the decrease of waste leading to a rise in profits.

ISO certification is the method which an organization must undergo so as to be awarded a certificate of qualification. ISO certification is not awarded by ISO itself but many countries have established certain bodies which audit organisations that make an application for the ISO compliance certification. A nominal charge is levied by the ISO certification body for their service. The organization must first train all its employees on the ISO certification process, what can be expected, how it functions and the reason why they must undergo this process. Some key employees must also be trained on all the areas of the quality system. This will cut back the doubt and opposition of workers. The organization must also write all the required documents as per the ISO quality standards and the organization’s quality goals. This is the quality manual and contains a collection of quality system techniques. The organization should then practice and work with the quality system for a few months. This can give the organization a chance to make changes to their system. All of these changes must be documented.

After the organisation has tried out its new quality system, it is then audited. The quantity of auditors needed and the time concerned in the audit will vary with the scale of the organisation and the complicatedness of the business. The auditing is done on 2 levels. First there are the internal auditors (these are staff trained for this process) and this will give the organisation chance to fine tune or to make changes to their quality system. After the internal audit is done and they are pleased with their progress, there is then an external audit by external auditors (these are auditors from the licensing body). This is done so as to ensure that the quality system is being followed from the top to the bottom, from the management down to the employees. Proof that the company has been following the quality system must also be produced. This could be training records, inspection records, customer feedback records and so forth. The external audit will ensure the system is working. This is going to help the organization to find out where the system may be improved, to fix where the system isn’t working and to prevent problems from arising later on.

The external audit will then make corrections where it is their view that better procedures may be followed or they may approve the companys current quality system. If they make suggestions of some changes, they give the organization time to effect and to execute. After 1 or 2 months, they then come back for another audit.
If they’re confident that the ISO certification process has been followed, then the organisation is awarded with a certificate of compliance.