Friday, November 15, 2013

An Assessment Of The ISO 9001 For Small Businesses

By Sonya Riley


ISO 9000 generally relates to the family of quality management standards. These standards are put in place in order to that all the commercial production processes have attained a certain level of quality. Different processing and production entities have to implement the standards as this is seen as way of boosting reputation. The ISO 9001 for small businesses relates to standards that regulate the performance and production platforms in different industries.

There are many international bodies which are entrusted with the role of implementation of the standard platforms. The International Organization of Standardization issues all the platforms that are then implemented across the board. The standards define the level of quality which must be attained by the products before they can be retailed in different trading blocks.

Quality certifications for commercial enterprises are very important. This signals that the enterprises have met the threshold conditions needed for quality production systems. A third party assesses the internal production environment on behalf of certification organizations. Once the assessment has validated the quality levels of systems, the certifications 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.

There is a certain level of superior financial performance associated with the ISO 9001 certification for small businesses. Customers have a tendency of trusting products form companies within a higher level of certification. This is driven by the fact that the higher the level of certification, the more the quality of products. This stimulates the sales on an assortment of goods. As the sales increase, the costs of operations reduce optimizing the profits on various production lines.

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 top level of management is responsible for making the strategic decisions. These are decisions that define the type of business that a company will venture into. The process and operating environment is also defined at this level. The direction to be taken by an organization is defined once the strategic decisions have been made. Relations with various classes of stakeholders are also defined by the decisions made here. The middle level managers implement the decisions made at the top level of administration.

The ISO 9001 for small businesses is focused on improving the level of business integrity. Policies made are weighted against various principles of the quality platform. The demands of the various classes of customers should be linked with the production policies. Random audits on the policies are performed regularly to check on the effectiveness.




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