What the ISO 9001 Certificate Stands for

The successful management and operation of companies as well as their products and services are exposed to many challenges due to constant change and therefore require systematic and clear management as well as proof of their quality.
Here’s a quick example: Suppose a “car airbag” is produced but doesn’t deploy. Then it is clear that the “non-triggering” or problem must be fixed before the car can be released for sale to customers. It is therefore important to ensure quality at all times and to continuously monitor processes.

One way to success is to introduce and maintain a so-called quality management system, which is geared towards continuous improvement and takes into account the requirements of all stakeholders.

A quality management system is understood to be the entirety of all activities for the safeguarding, control and further development of quality, taking into account profitability and the organisational unit required for this. The aim is to increase customer satisfaction and generate profit.
Ensuring quality is increasingly seen as a decisive competitive factor as well as existential security. If, for example, a company or its products and services loses quality, it also loses its customers in the long run.

To the Certification in Quality Management

For many years, the ISO 9000 quality management standard series has offered proven assistance in the implementation of quality management systems in organizations. The ISO 9001 standard is published by the “International Organization for Standardization“, or ISO for short, and is the most successful and most certified ISO standard in the world, as for many companies and organizations a corresponding certification is a prerequisite for awarding contracts to other companies. Certification confirms that the relevant standard requirements are met. In addition, certification can be an aid for companies to recognize how qualitatively they work themselves and where improvements are necessary.

The foundation of the series of standards is ISO 9000, which explains the basic terms and principles of quality management. ISO 9001 specifies the requirements for a quality management system and is the actual management system according to which companies can be certified. It provides information on how to set up a quality system and how to develop it further in the sense of continuous improvement. Its decisive feature is also the so-called “High Level Structure”, which was introduced to improve compatibility with other management standards and to establish a uniform structure. This new structure is intended to reflect the typical process of entrepreneurial planning and implementation. More than one million companies and organizations worldwide and almost 50,000 in Germany are certified according to this standard.

This “ISO 9000 family” contains standards that document the principles for quality management measures and corresponds to a globally recognized standard that defines requirements for effective quality management in a company. Certified companies have three years to convert and introduce their quality management system to the new standard. Due to the revision ISO 9001:2015, which came into force in September 2018, all old certificates based on ISO 9001:2008 will lose their validity and the effectiveness of the quality management system will be re-examined.

Standardised Yet Flexible

One advantage of ISO 9001 is that it “only” provides the user or the company with a certain framework, within which it is permitted to make changes or implement individual requirements individually depending on the industry or focus of activity. This generic approach gives companies a lot of freedom to adapt and implement the standard individually. Furthermore, ISO 9001 contains important modern management approaches, such as the stakeholder approach or leadership of managers, which can be associated with total quality management (principle of good corporate governance).

However, one possible weakness of ISO 9001 could be the lack of financial metrics, a company’s most important resources. After all, how are you supposed to run a company without these aspects in terms of quality management? The general approach could also be cited as a disadvantage, as it grants the company a lot of freedom in implementation, but lacks clear guidelines on how exactly something is to be implemented. The evaluation and internal audits must also still be carried out at “planned intervals”. But what is meant by “planned” is not defined.

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