ISO 9001 Registration ? 8 Steps for Success

You've made the plans, built the quality system and conducted the audit. So how do you register your company as ISO 9001 conformant? And how can you be sure you're getting the most value for your investment? Here's how the process works.

Certifying Your Company and Quality System

After your company's ISO 9001 audit, you will want to register your company's quality system to show that you've met the requirements. And to do this effectively, you will need to follow eight essential steps.

1. Finding a Registrar

You'll need to begin searching for an ISO registrar during the 2 to 3 months your company is still building its quality system. You can search the Registrar Accreditation Board (RAB) at http://www.rabnet.com to select the registrar right for you.

2. Selecting a Registrar

Select a registrar that has experience within the scope category of your specific industry, which you can also find on the RAB site. Keep in mind accreditation, scheduling issues, fees and comfort level when selecting the registrar right for you.

3. Creating an Application

A company and a registrar will agree on the application, contract. This defines the rights and obligations of both parties, and includes liability issues, confidentiality and access rights.

4. Conducting a Document Review

The registrar will require a copy of your quality manual and procedures to verify that all the requirements of the standard are addressed. Allow 2-4 weeks in advance for the registrar to fully review all of the necessary documents.

5. Determining Preassessment

Though optional, this 2-4 week initial review of the system identifies any significant omissions or weaknesses. It saves time and allows the registrar to assess any issues and resolve logistics before the actual assessment audit.

6. Issuing an Assessment

During the audit, or physical onsite inspection of procedures in action, the auditors will issue findings if they assess anything that doesn't meet requirements, or nonconformities. The length of this step will depend on the scope of the audit and the size your organization.

7. Completing ISO Registration

After all of the findings are put into the audit report and nonconformities are addressed, your company has the option to register as ISO 9001 conformant. You will receive a certificate and can also be listed in a register, which the company can use to publicize its registration and use in advertising.

8. Checking with Surveillances

To ensure that the system is maintained and that changes don't result in deficiencies in the system, registrars perform regular surveillances of the system. Over the three-year period of your certificate, auditors will perform one full and two partial checks of your system.

Considerations in Planning

The Document Review and Preassessment typically require 2-4 weeks each. However, the number of registrars and the number of days for each stage of the registration audit depends on the size and complexity of your organization. So set target dates accordingly to allow both you and the registrar time to fully prepare.

Strong Return on Your Internal Audit Investment

Always keep in mind, registration should provide you with valuable feedback to improve your system. So make sure to seek the appropriate registrar, and take full advantage of the entire audit process. After all, it's your company, it's your registration, and so make sure you get a strong return on YOUR investment.

Chris Anderson has over 18 years of sales, marketing and business management experience working with business process design, software and systems engineering. He is also co-author of policies and procedures manual products, producing the layout, process design and implementation to increase performance. He is currently the Managing Director of Bizmanualz, Inc. Visit: Bizmanualz, Inc.

---

How To Use Outsourcing To Beat Your Competition

Outsourcing is when you hire outside professionals or services to take on part of your business workload. You may want to outsource part of your work because you don't have the room, you... Read More

How Managers Can Turn Failures Into Successes

Although there are real, external reasons for managerial difficulty ? including massive reorganization after takeovers and the realities of discrimination due to age, sex, and race ? managers fail most often for reasons... Read More

Innovation Management: The Power of Emotional Attachment

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly,... Read More

Score the Rainbows Pot of Gold: Become the Boss That No One Wants to Leave

Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. Peter DruckerLadies and gentlemen, the... Read More

How Bad Communication Can Hold You Back and How to Break Free of It

The reason jobs are often not done right and employees are fired is because of lack of skill. Right? Wrong! Poor communication and ineffective human relations are the major causes. Remember: Communication is... Read More

Get Down With OCP: Evaluating DBA Job Applicants in an OCP World

Not long ago, weeding through DBA applicants with a tech interview was a straightforward process. You'd ask candidates 200 or so technical questions. If they got 100 correct answers, you knew they'd been... Read More

Dealing with Difficult People

You know, this would be a great business if it weren't for having to deal with people all the time?OK, so maybe I've exaggerated things a bit, but we've all certainly heard that... Read More

Innovation Management ? does the idea fit with the firm?

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly,... Read More

Why Saying Well Done Works

Encouraged by the recognition, Sarah Lewsiton went home from work that day, full of self-belief and wonder that she had made the leap at last. In her last job, she had always felt... Read More

Guidelines For Conducting A Good Meeting

Okay, so you've figured out what kind of meeting is needed, you've planned well and you have all the right materials. How about the meeting itself? How can you be sure the meeting... Read More

Creativity and Innovation Management - Core Competencies and Competitive Advantage

Following is a brief definition of core competencies and competitive advantage and their fit with creativity and innovation management.Core Competence:A core competence is one which critically underpins the organisation's competitive advantage. Companies can... Read More

Five Essential Hiring Practices

Recruiting and hiring are often done in haste, leaving the company to repent in the long run. Today, there's a reason to be concerned about negligent hiring. Negligent hiring means you and your... Read More

Help Your Employees Prepare for a Performance Appraisal

PREPARING EMPLOYEES FOR THE PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL INTERVIEWS: Remind employees to give some thought to the purpose of performance appraisal: it is a means to learn from the past, plan for the future, and... Read More

5 Ways to Work More Effectively With Your Administrative Assistant

Stop hiring new administrative support staff. And learn how to retain your existing administrative staff.Are you a manager, director or other senior-level personnel who wants to work more effectively with your administrative support... Read More

Towards Intercultural Understanding

An individual's ability to forge effective relationships across cultures is influenced by a very personal and highly complex mixture of emotional and cognitive processes. Anyone contemplating an overseas posting feels apprehensive about stepping... Read More

Online Business Peace of Mind

Is your online business disaster-proof? Online businesses face a unique set of challenges. Unlike our offline counterparts, we must worry about hackers, credit-card fraud, loss of data, virus attacks, websites going down and... Read More

Making Powerful Requests That Launch People Into Action

Do you ever wonder why people do not simply do the things that you want them to do? Well, instead of waiting for things to happen, decide to take responsibility for making them... Read More

Efficiency Around The Office

Nearly every office, be it commercial or home-based, may have areas of inefficiency that can be improved upon. We are not talking sales figures or profit margins or budgets, but inefficient waste and... Read More

Creativity and Innovation Management: The Creative State

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be... Read More

Turnover is Not a Problem

"Ha!" you say. "For someone to make a statement like that, they obviously haven't worked in the real world and certainly have never had to run a company." Well, let me assure you.... Read More

Creativity and Innovation Management: Generating Better Ideas

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. There are other useful definitions for both, for example, creativity can be... Read More

Great Employees = Passionate Consumers

Companies spend millions of dollars each year identifying their brand, and then communicating their brand promise through various media.Employees are the primary "media" in the majority of brand contacts. Raise your hand if... Read More

Effective Multi Cultural International Business Meetings

Of the many areas in international business where cultural differences manifest is in the corporate meeting room. International meetings are an area where differences in cultural values, etiquette, interpretations of professional conduct and... Read More

Is A Bad Attitude Permanent

Today there is great weight put on a person's attitude. It is as if this is something for which they are individually responsible and should be held to account for.The inference seems to... Read More

Time Management and Team Development - The Yes and No of It

Sometimes.In fact making some small changes to the circumstances when we use these two little words, can make all the difference. And it takes practice.Saying 'Yes' More......brings help when we are offered it.... Read More

Your Company Without Training - Any Questions?

Okay, be honest!Are you guilty of sticking in a few boring videos and calling it training?Do you send in your department heads to deliver a few, rushed, canned presentations and call it orientation?Are... Read More

Seeking Help

Where does the time go? Billable time. As a consultant, your practice may be doing reasonably well; you're charging $100-150 an hour. As an independent consultant, you're probably also doing everything from grinding... Read More

Managing Creativity

Creativity Starts Here!The ability of an organisation to create new products/services and innovate new processes is an essential skill providing a sustainable form of competitive advantage.Given that organisations need to be creative, why... Read More

Keeping Team Meetings Vibrant

Meetings can be the life-blood of an organisation or the death.It all depends how you approach them.People need to communicate ? that's a fact, and it's not enough to do it over computers.... Read More