An Assessment Of The ISO 9001 For Small Businesses

By Sonya Riley


ISO 9001 is collection of standards which relates to quality management of different management systems. The standards are designed to help the organizations meet the expectations of a number of classes of stakeholders. Standardization of such systems also ensures that different groups of shareholders have improved levels of confidence in their organizations. The ISO 9001 for small businesses is a special family of standards which defines the regulatory and statutory requirements relating to products being produced.

The International Organization of Standardization is entrusted with the role of setting the platform. The standards are issued periodically by this organization. These standards relates to the quality of products that are to be produced. The platform highlights a number of principles on which the system is based. The companies under this umbrella are expected to implement all the standards.

For commercial enterprises, quality certification is very important. This is used as a threshold of measuring the levels of quality achieved within the internal and external production environment. Independent parties are used for the analysis and audit of these environments. After the validation of these internal conditions, the necessary certificates are issued.

A global system of the quality certification is adopted for various reasons. This is mainly for the producing and supplying organizations. The holders of the certificates have attained a specified level of quality within their systems. This means that they can be trusted to produce quality packages of goods and services. There are financial benefits associated with holding such certification. The audit costs are down since most of the processes are already assessed, audited and well-analyzed by system specialists.

Superior financial performance is often associated with the certified organizations. Customers tend to buy products from the certified companies since their products are of very high quality. As a result, their sales are stimulated. Increased sales mean more revenue turnover. Costs tend to reduce with every level of new certification attained. The system audit fees are reduced since most of the systems are already assessed. Reduction of operating costs and increase in revenues optimizes the profits.

There are a number of systems that need to be assessed and certified for quality management. Most of these systems are internal. They form a larger part of the internal operating environment within a business. Human resource management, infrastructural management and customer-related processes are some of these processes. The requirements of each of the systems also ought to be well documented before and after the assessments.

The management controls the running of various operations within a business. The directors of a firm are in charge of making various strategic decisions. These include the focus on customers and planning on how to improve the relationship between the internal and external stakeholders of a company. They communicate the decisions made and then the middle level management implements these decisions.

Business integrity entails implementation of sound business policies. The ISO 9001 for small businesses is mainly focused on improving this. The main focus is the integrity of production and marketing the products. Sound policy ensures the demands and the needs of customers are linked with each of the products. Audit on the effectiveness of the policies ought to be carried out randomly on a regular basis.




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