What is ISO9001?

Sometimes we are asked about ISO and what it means. We wanted to give just a brief overview about it to help shed light on why we at RelianceCM find it important and why we strive to maintain our certification and apply it daily on each and every project we do.

ISO 9001 is just one of the standards within the range of ISO9000 standards.

The ISO 9000 family of standards is related to quality management systems and designed to help organizations ensure that they meet the needs of customers and other stakeholderswhile meeting statutory and regulatory requirements related to the product. The standards are published by ISO, the International Organization for Standardization. ISO 9000 deals with the fundamentals of quality management systems, including the eight management principles on which the family of standards is based.

The eight principles on which the standard is based, and that RelianceCM believes, are as follows:

• Principle 1 – Focus on your customers
• Principle 2 – Provide leadership
• Principle 3 – Involve your people
• Principle 4 – Use a process approach
• Principle 5 – Take a systems approach to management
• Principle 6 – Encourage continual improvement
• Principle 7 – Get the facts before making a decision
• Principle 8 – Work with your suppliers towards a mutually beneficial relationship

ISO 9001’s objective is to provide quality management systems that are of benefit to organizations to help manage their business effectively and put in place best practice methodology.

Some benefits of achieving ISO 9001 certification are time and cost savings, improved productivity, reduced waste and improved customer relationships. Some companies and organizations require that the companies that they do business with are ISO certified.

Organizations don’t just “get certified” and then do nothing. It is an ongoing process to maintain ISO 9001 certification and RelianceCM gets it renewed at the regular intervals recommended by the certification body.  RelianceCM also goes beyond those intervals and hires an independent outside auditor that reviews our progress on a quarterly basis.

There are no grades of competence within ISO 9001. Either a company is certified (meaning that it is committed to the method and model of quality management described in the standard) or it is not.

We hope that helps explain the basics of ISO 9001!