ISO Certification - Basic needs and Procedures

I. Introduction.

ISO 9001:2000 is a System Standard certification applicable to all types of organizations. The certification can be for Design & Development or only for Development. The initial certification is valid for 03 years subject to yearly Surveillance Audit. ISO certification underlines a system which has the assurance or proper documentation or evidence for each and every activity of the organization.

II. Basic Needs for the System.

 Well-defined Objectives and Principles.
 Effective integrated System for achieving the objectives.
 Implementation of the said system with involvement of people.
 Performance review (minimum 02 management review per annum) and improvement attitude for the system in place.
 All the above should have documented evidence to certify by internal as well as external auditors.
In short, everyone should be ready to answer the following 06 questions on each activity/process/departments:
• What is your quality policy?
• How you do your job?
• Show the internal system which tells you to do this job?
• Show the evidences for that?
• What action do you take if you have problem?
• What training have you received to help you to do this job?

III. Requirements in brief.

1) Identify each Process / Department – Like Purchase/ Stores / Production/Finance/Admin/Marketing/Sales etc.
2) Determine the criteria and methods for controlling the same – Each dept. shall have its own working manual/policy with guidelines.
3) Ensure the availability of adequate resources and proper internal communication for implementation of the same – Define the reqd. qualification for each post/designation and communication of info thru proper channels.
4) Control of supporting documents and records – Electronic media or paper documents as support of each activities and instructions.
5) Regular management review followed by internal checking/evaluation, corrective action plan and training – Audit of a particular department (monthly or quarterly) by people from other departments and ensures the availability of resource/records, achievements and improvement methods. The same needs to be reported by a Management Representative (MR) to the management and to take corrective action and training, if required.
6) Customer oriented Product/Project Realization – As like Product/Project display and giving Proposal with respect to client requirement. There should be some records for each and every customer order/enquiry and for its response.
7) Identification and Traceability of each Product / Project – Supplier evaluation, verification and storage of purchased products and customer property (materials supplied by customers for production/inspection etc.). For this, List of approved suppliers should be there for each product and proper documented evidence for each purchase/storage/consumption.
8) Continual Improvement/Corrective Action/Preventive Action for each activity – The consistency level of each activity/department needs to be reviewed for improvement and in contrary the necessary Corrective and Preventive Action needs to be taken if the present level is a failure. There should be evidence for the failure/action/improvement.

IV. Conclusion.
The ultimate aim for the certification is the transparent functioning with documented evidence for future reference. Implementation of this System will bring well defined responsibility and authority to each individual of the organization. As an ISO certified organization, the Organization will have a reputation in front of our customers and suppliers.