Achieving ISO 9001 is a huge milestone. Getting it is hard. Keeping it is difficult
McGowans ISO 9001 team
McGowans are delighted to announce that they recently achieved ISO 9001 certification. "ISO 9001 Certified" means an organisation has met the requirements in ISO9001. It defines an ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS). ISO 9001:2008 is focused on meeting customer expectations and delivering customer satisfaction so you must pay attention to the customer.
The standard helps you achieve consistent results and continually improve the process. Therefore, if you can make a good product most of the time, this helps you make it all of the time. It's just good business practices.
Brian Fay - Operations Manager at McGowans and leader of the ISO team had this to say.
"It is a great credit to everyone here that got behind this project. Special word of thanks to the members of the ISO Group that stuck with this and still continue to assist in keeping it to the fore. We now have a few new members on the panel and we look forward to the input from them.
As anybody who has installed ISO 9001 will know this is a continuous process and involves many techniques, one of which is called Kaizan. This is a Japanese word that means continuous improvement. There is always a better way. The theory says that a one percent improvement every day, leads to a huge improvement at the end of the year. There was hard work involved in getting the Company this accreditation, and equally the same amount of work is required to maintain this standard. The next external surveillance Audit takes place in January 2017.
From the Sales perspective of achieving accreditation there are plenty of potential new clients out there who look to see do you operate to a quality standard. McGowans can now tick that box. In addition and as important there has been a huge improvement in how they are operating by checking what they are doing throughout the entire process.
There are many reason for getting ISO 9001. Some of them are:
- Meet Customer Requirements
- Get More Revenue and Business from New Customers
- Improve Company and Product Quality
- Increase Customer Satisfaction with your Products
- Describe, Understand, and Communicate Your Company Processes
- Develop a Professional Culture and Better Employee Morale
- Improve the Consistency of Your Operations
- Focus Management and Employees
- Improve Efficiency, Reduce Waste, and Save Money
- Achieve International Quality Recognition
- Create a professional business culture
- Increased credibility and competitiveness in the market
Eight Key Principles of Quality ManagementThere are several different documents in the ISO 9000 family of standards, but ISO 9001-2008 is the only ISO standard that requires certification.. ISO 9001:2008 is the most recent standard, and the "2008" references the year of latest revision. It was previously called ISO 9001:2000, which is now obsolete (as are ISO 9002 and ISO 9003.) and replaced by ISO 9001:2008 in the year 2008.
The ISO 9001 standard provides a framework of globally recognised principles of quality management, including:
- Customer focus,
- Leadership,
- Involvement of people,
- Process approach to management,
- Continual improvement,
- Factual approach to decision making
- Mutually beneficial supplier relationships.
- System approach to management
These are also known as the eight key principals of quality management.
Obviously, the Company is naturally delighted and they want to offer their huge thanks to their ISO team, most of whom are pictured above with the certificate.
Will McGowans now move to the next step, which is World Class Business (WCB) or as it used to be called World Class Manufacturing? It's unlikely they would be able to embrace this concept fully, like most multi national corporations, because they are not big enough. Yet.