Standards, whether ISO or not, are essential because they offer guidance for ensuring your organization’s products and services consistently meet customer requirements. But standards alone aren’t enough. To ensure processes and systems are complying with requirements, audits are needed.

We’ve all had the experience of keeping two or more versions of a document and—inevitably—sending or using the wrong one, uncertain of which is most current and accurate. If it’s just two versions of a letter to Aunt Minnie in Spokane, that’s one thing, but if operating procedures change and appear in a newer version of a document that doesn’t replace the old one, it may mean thousands of dollars in waste or lost sales.

A step-by-step guide to implementing an ISO 9001 quality management system. The ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) has been around since 1987 and is generally acknowledged to produce some fairly significant benefits, including improved profitability, higher sales and better employee morale.

ISO 9001:2008 requires organizations to identify their quality management system (QMS) processes and interactions. The resources to operate, control, monitor, measure and continually improve those processes must be identified.