Quality Assurance & the Road to Certification
Certifications are useful tools for businesses to ensure they follow efficient standard specifications for their products, services, and processes. Put simply, a certification is a checklist for quality assurance.
Getting quality assurance certification is like achieving a milestone of success for businesses because it demonstrates that the business has an effective quality management or QMS, fully meets customer expectations, and continuously improves its operations. Many businesses have gained a lot from the certification, including a reduction in manufacturing errors, an increase in process efficiency, faster service delivery, saving of costs, and so on. Also to say it technically, quality certification is an essential tool that opens up new avenues for business in the form of new customers, new contracts, and new partnerships.
Quality assurance and certification, therefore, go hand-in-hand. To get certified, you need to have a definite quality assurance system that ensures better quality and conformance. This blog will explain how quality assurance services make the road to certification easier.
Research for the Scope of QMS
The first step for quality assurance is researching the business processes, suppliers, technologies used to discover the scope of the QMS. Research also includes identifying the current industry trends, changes in customer expectations in the industry, and governmental quality regulations so that you can incorporate them into your quality management approach.
Implementation of the QMS
One general requirement for any quality certification is the prominent establishment of a QMS which takes care of the defined scope and quality objectives of your business. Any abrupt or vague management system does not only lead to higher error rates in production, defective products, or substandard services, it also results in wasteful processes and more dissatisfied customers. Thus, the implementation of a definite QMS will help your business have explicit quality management besides meeting an important checklist factor for certification.
Causing an Organizational Change
The key asset of any business is its people. A business inevitably depends on the will of the employees to strongly implement a strict management system for quality assurance. The journey of an organization from no QMS to an effective QMS full of quality controls is not simple, it requires commitment from all the members of the organization. Members from the top management of the business should also dedicate their efforts to bringing a large-scale change in the processes of the organization with the QMS implementation.
Seeking quality assurance will inherently lead to an organized quality management framework that addresses all core processes, support processes, employee performance, distribution, and supply of products or services.
Internal Assessment or Auditing
Certification is provided to a business by the international certification body only if their QMS abides by the general quality principles and regulations of the certification standard, like ISO 9001. Your business is almost ready to be certified if you have a documented QMS for quality, and the implemented system matches exactly with all specifications of the documented QMS.
To get certified, you will need to perform frequent assessments or audits of your business internally with a team of quality inspection executives. They will check and evaluate whether the implemented QMS and procedures under it are fully compliant with the standard requirements. Internal auditing, an inherent part of quality assurance, is the final stage of quality certification. It helps the organization discover any non-conformities in their QMS and address them before the final certification audit is performed by the certification body.
Final Thoughts
The goal of a business is to achieve quality assurance certification and demonstrate its commitment to quality to everyone, including stakeholders, competitors, and partners. However, achieving certification from an internationally-acclaimed organization like ISO can be challenging, as there are many specifications (regarding the products/services and processes) that your business must meet, including the effective implementation of a QMS. Quality assurance is only accomplished when an organization designs, adopts, and follows a definite QMS. The commitment of an organization’s members is also important.
The effort an organization puts towards quality assurance will lead to a successful certification. However, a business can get confused during the journey to certification. They may not understand how to determine the scope of their QMS, or what the key aspects of quality assurance are. Getting a second opinion to check whether your QMS is appropriate and compliant with the certification’s requirements is important, and Compliancehelp Consulting LLC can help! We are a team of dedicated and trained quality assurance experts that help businesses with ISO certifications. If you are looking for a reliable team that will provide top-notch consultation on ISO certification, we will solve all your queries and lead you to successful certification. Contact us today, we are a call away!
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