Question

ISO 9000 is a set of international standards on quality management. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) promotes worldwide standards that will improve efficiency and productivity. The ISO 9000 standards are important for doing business internationally, especially in Europe. Over 40,000 companies are certified by ISO. To become certified, companies must go through a process documenting procedures involving process control, inspection, purchasing, and training. After the documentation is complete, there is an on-site visit to verify the procedures documented. After certification, registered companies go through a series of audits. They must be recertified every three years.

Assume that you manufactured uniforms for several US government agencies. How would you implement the ISO 9000 standards to ensure quality for your government customer?

Answer 1

It is very difficult to achieve Quality Standards to every company, to do so we need to implement certain standards. A company to achieve and improve the quality of its products and services it needs to implement ISO 9000 (International Organization for Standardization) standards.

The most widely recognized standards are ISO 9000 which presents guidelines to increase business efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The goals of ISO 9000 standards are:

• to embed Quality Management System
• Increasing Productivity
• Reducing unnecessary costs
• Ensure quality of processes and products

Implementation of ISO 9000 standards for uniform manufacturing unit in U.S for government customers:

1. One has to decide that if ISO 9000 is appropriate to the organization.
2. Selecting ISO 9000 system that is most applicable to the organization.
3. To perform shortfall analysis which indicate how much the organization varies from ISO 9000 compliance.
4. Creating implementation plan.
5. Resolving the compliance variations.
6. Implementing Training, Transitional process and similar other activities.
7. To do internal reviews and auditing of the newly established Quality system.
8. Preparing to undergo on site compliance Audit.

Consistent conformance to customers expectation is what the definition of Quality indicates and some its principles of Quality Management are:

• Quality Management is customer focused: through surveys and focus groups customer satisfaction should be calculated and documented
• Quality Performance has to be measured: Both to process that create products and services and customer satisfaction with those products and services should be related.
• Quality Management should be Improvement Driven: In both process performance and customer satisfaction improvement must be demonstrated.

The required steps to conformance to specification:

1. Define quality characteristics
2. Measure each of the quality characteristics
3. Set quality standards to each characteristics
4. control quality against these standards
5. find and correct the causes of poor quality
6. continue to make improvements

The integrity and value of a business will be worth with well documented processes and proof of quality. ISO 9000 will ensure the reputation of the business in any situation.