ISO Certification For Management Standards
ISO Certification for management standards is a symbol of Prestige. The ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. ISO is the Greek word “isos” which means “equal”. In addition, ISO is a nongovernmental organization that was established in 1947 and has its head office in Geneva, Switzerland. The standards which are developed by ISO are currently been followed in more than 140 countries. Companies apply these standards and get ISO certification.
The most famous and highly followed standards in the world are the following:
- ISO 9001
- 14001
- 22000
- 27001
- 45001
- 13485
From this list, ISO 9001 is at the top which is a complete management system for a quality management system. Then its health and safety, environment, and food safety management system.
All ISO standards are revised at regular intervals to improve them further and make them a more refined management system. We can implement them on any type or size of organization to achieve ISO certification for management standards. This is the beauty of these standards.
The ISO standards provide a complete framework to achieve the desired objectives from the implementation of these management systems. These standards are so helpful. They minimize the losses in a system and make it more productive and easy to manage. They also highlight the areas that need improvement continuously.
The ISO standards follow the famous P-D-C-A cycle of Plan, Do, Check, and Act. This allows the organization to develop, implement, maintain, and continually improve its management systems.
ISO Certification – Integration of standards:
The management systems that come out of each ISO standard are easy to merge to make one integrated management system. Most of the latest ISO standards are written following the high-level structure of Annex-SL which allows the handling, implementation, and merger of these management systems very easily and ultimately an easy ISO certification for management standards.
This ease in a merger of these management systems, allows organizations to avoid duplicity while implementing ISO standards. If we talk about the worldwide acceptance and implementation of these ISO standards then the numbers are huge. Both in the manufacturing and servicing sectors. This proves that the organizations are getting the required results from these management standards.
All big companies follow strict vendor pre-qualification protocols. Being ISO certified is one of their key requirement for new vendors to pass their pre-qualification process. This gives them confidence and trust while selecting a new vendor.
Sometimes the companies physically visit their critical vendors and perform the supplier audit. Through their qualified auditors or from approved 3rd party auditing firms. The purpose of these audits is to ensure compliance and verify the ISO certification for management standards. The audit criteria for a supplier’s audit are usually based on management systems. Whereas the ISO standards could vary based on the nature of the business of that company.
The audit reports generated from these audits provide insight into the company’s management systems performance. The results make it easy for the companies to select their vendors after evaluation.
ISO Certification – Resistance to Change:
Implementing these management systems from ISO is always a tricky task for organizations as these systems bring certain changes and apply controls on various internal processes. These new changes and controls are considered hurdles by the employees and they show resistance to adopting the change.
This results in a situation where organizations continue following their traditional management system and create a dummy management system to pass the 3rd party certification audits. The company will become vulnerable to external audits, especially to assessment bodies who comes for ISO certification for management standards. However, the auditors can easily identify if the organization is practically implementing the system or if it’s just a dummy system.
Here, the role of top management is critical while implementing the new management systems. The lack of interest from top management will slow the implementation process and it might lose track to achieve desired results and benefits.
Therefore, it’s always advisable for organizations to adopt the new system as it will bring positive changes within the management systems and the overall system will become lean while removing all unnecessary processes. Also, the process will become easy for ISO certification for management standards.
On the other hand, if the companies do not implement the system and continue following the traditional system then it’s a high chance that they can get blacklisted from their clients upon identification, or even their certificate will get suspended.
The process of ISO certification is very easy and simple. Once the companies implement a management system and create enough pieces of evidence of system implementation. They need to confirm the system implementation through internal audits, followed by management review meetings.
This will assure them that their company is ready to go for an external audit for ISO certification of management standards.
ISO Certification – GMC as a top consultancy company:
For system development and implementation, there are reliable consultancy firms available in the market that will develop your management system and train the employees on a newly developed system for easy adaptation.
Once the results from the internal audit are satisfactory and show good implementation results. The company can approach an accredited 3rd party certification body for an independent assessment of its management system.
Upon successfully passing the audit from 3rd party certification body, the organization will receive the certificate for 03 years. However, companies need to pass yearly surveillance audits to ensure the validity and active status of their ISO certificates.
Passing a surveillance audit is mandatory to keep the status active for ISO certification for management standards.
Some of the certification bodies issue a certificate for only one year and based on successfully passing the surveillance audit the company will get a new certificate with one-year validity. This process of yearly surveillance ensures continuous assessment and keeps the organizations liable to continue following the standard requirements.
Finally, the beauty of these ISO standards lies in effective implementation and adapting its controls and frameworks. Failing to do so can become a burden for a company to keep its ISO certification for management standards status valid and makes it even harder to achieve a greater customer satisfaction level.