Earning the ISO 9001 Certification Auditors’ Nod with Flying Colors (Demo)

Every company seeking ISO 9001 certification will make the effort to put its best foot forward and earn an auditor’s approval. In a Tech Republic article dated June 26, 2002 article, writer Charles Babilya says:

The telecommunications equipment supplier I work for faced a number of challenges when it discovered that it had to be contractually obligated to become ISO 9001 certified. As mentioned in a prior article, the first challenge was in determining what needed to be done in order to pass the pending ISO audit that was just eight weeks away. There were no real secrets to getting ready—just a lot of preparation work that involved putting all the key documentation in order. It also helped when we were finally able to get the support of the development managers, whom we relied on in order to understand their processes.

Any industry professional may tell you that being accredited with an ISO certification 9001 label means you’ve achieved a certain standard of performance and professional reputation. Once you’re up there, however, it is the start of a continuing challenge to stay there and make things better for you and your company. An ISO 9001 specialist company such as International Standards Authority, Inc. will have the capability to gauge you and identify areas of improvement. A consultation with the ISA auditing team will be based on a number of factors, the foremost of which is to draft a company quality management system (QMS). The QMS will govern the various work processes needed to ensure full compliance with the ISO Standards. Babilya said some prior work helped get his firm ready for the auditors. A QMS by itself needs to have guidelines that accurately reflect what is needed for compliance under ISO standards. In some cases, a QMS manual that may have been active and followed for a period of time may only need slight adjustments to properly sync with requirements. Similar versions may be needed for department-based QMS manuals, but still adhere to the main QMS guidelines and the Standards themselves. The cooperation of all personnel on your team will be vital, especially during the pre-audit preparation and the time when ISO auditors are in the workplace. Babilya said his team was able to document records on the most important processes and place them in special folders for perusal by the auditors. An overall quality manager with prior experience on ISO audits was assigned to test the team with mock audits, which included detailing each member’s job functions and how it applies to meeting ISO compliance. Earning the ISO nod can be the start of better things if a company is prepared. It will certainly be worth the effort. (Source: How to pass the ISO 9001 certification test, Tech Republic, July 26, 2002)