ISO 9001:2015 Advice

In many areas, companies are expected to have ISO 9001 certification. Here, companies must create a quality management manual with all associated documents. This QM set of rules is then audited by a certification body and certified in accordance with the current ISO9001:2015 standard. This is where most SMEs fail if they only rely on run-of-the-mill templates from the Internet. That’s why our QM experts help with ISO 9001 consulting. This means you don’t have to spend months creating standards-compliant documents. In the following pages on the subject of ISO9001 certification we will provide you with a lot of useful information.

Medium-sized companies and corporations in particular expect that corporations with which they plan long-term cooperation have a structured quality management system (abbreviated: QMS). In some cases, some insurance companies can calculate a higher operational risk if the ISO9001 certificate is missing, which leads to higher premiums for business liability insurance. This is due to a higher risk of damage due to a lack of quality management. Accidents with personal injuries and property damage have occurred statistically more often than in companies with a certified quality management system.

The ISO 9001 standard is an internationally recognized standard for quality management systems. Companies increase their customer satisfaction and efficiency by implementing the requirements of the standard. Their competitiveness improves their business development. This means they grow more sustainably in the areas of customers, sales and profits. Not only profit-oriented companies implement IEC ISO 9001:2015 in their organization. State, municipal and non-profit organizations use such management systems to optimize their business processes. Education providers have often obtained the ISO 9001 certification from an accredited certification body. Private schools, private universities but also state institutions benefit from a certified quality management system. The workforce therefore has an increased awareness of the necessary processes in such organizations to achieve the goals sustainably. Academic research has a lot to do with basic principles, experiments and ideas. But if the research results are lost or falsified, there is a risk of losing research funds.

How to get ISO9001 certified?

Traditionally, ISO 9001 certification is found in medium and large companies. Increasingly, regional specialist companies and SMEs have a certified QM manual. Of course, it takes a few weeks to create a quality management manual tailored to the company. Small and medium-sized companies fail, especially when it comes to issues such as the process landscape. You can create very complex flow charts or display clear phases. At SMEs, the structures are smaller and simpler. This means you can complete QM documentation in 2 to 12 weeks. The more efficient the preparation for the 9001 certification is, the less work the SME workforce will have to do.

Why do many suffer from ISO 9001 certification?

Since many smaller competitors avoid the costs of ISO 9001 certification, established and young companies can also hold their own against larger competitors. Sustainably organized companies can motivate their existing customers and potential clients to place larger orders and further expand long-term business relationships. As a result, SMEs willing to invest secure significantly more market share than their regional competitors can. Competitors mistakenly compare the requirements of the ISO9001 certification concept for corporations with the minimum standards applicable to small companies.

It is not that difficult to obtain ISO9001 certification. SME founders and managing directors have the least amount of work with a QM project if they leave the creation of the QM documents to a team of experts. This saves you time, personnel costs and opportunity costs. Thanks to our AI-supported documentation system, we can put together the quality management manual with all additional required forms for your company much faster and more streamlined. This reduces and limits the expected costs of creating and certifying DIN ISO 9001 documentation.

How can an SME get ISO9001 certified?

The certification of SMEs according to the DIN standard ISO9001 can usually be achieved through a 1-2 day audit. This makes the audit costs quite manageable. But what confuses many companies is that, depending on the country, the accreditation bodies (e.g. UKAS, DAkkS, RvA, …) require different requirements from the certification bodies for the auditing of companies. Some accreditation bodies are very demanding and expect certification bodies to examine the documents in detail in a much more complex manner than beneficial. Since the preparation, the certification audit and the choice of the certification body have a significant influence on the project costs and expected lead time, we will go into more detail in the following pages about the individual phases of a project to create the QM documents and ISO9001:2015 certification.

We create the ISO 9001 documents for your SME

So that you don’t spend your valuable working time dealing with the complexities of the ISO9001 standard, our implementation experts take over the creation of the documents for the certification of the quality management system. Your employees will receive everything they need in easy-to-understand employee training or introductory courses. Our available ISO 9001 workshops also enable you to specifically prepare specific employees for the upcoming audit at demanding certification bodies.

Our QM experts carry out an internal QM audit

To ensure that we can ensure that an ISO 9001 quality management system can be implemented in more complex systems, our business customers can request an “internal audit” from our experts. The experts we employ have the necessary specialist knowledge in the areas of audit, banking, production, IT and cloud technology. Customers benefit from auditing and IT forensics experience at 2 of the largest global accounting firms. Our certified ISO9001 lead auditors also carry out the internal audits in order to ensure quality assurance for the documentation as well.

Preparation for ISO 9001 certification

Anyone who has ever undergone certification for the first time can still remember the uneasy feeling in their gut when the auditor critically examined the documents. Complex ISO9001 quality management systems create an often unrealistic management system for medium-sized companies that has led to a lack of flexibility and a lot of frustration among the workforce. You don’t have to eat everything as hot as it is cooked.

We therefore thoroughly prepare our business customers for certification. These include the following measures:

Preliminary meeting with management
Awareness training for employees (online)
ISO 9001 checklists and understandable guidelines

Read more about preparing for certification as we have also put together informative videos for you. They explain the complex issue in an understandable way within a few minutes. This saves you from reading endless white papers.

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