ISO 9000 are a series of international standards that define the necessary requirements for the implementation of a Quality Management System (QMS) and the related certification. The ISO 9000 standards are divided into:
- ISO 9000 : Quality Management Systems – Fundamentals and vocabulary;
- ISO 9001: Quality Management Systems – Requirements;
- ISO 9004 : Managing an organization for the long-term success.
Applying ISO 9001 certification means realizing a system of procedures, instructions and forms that allow to manage and optimize business processes to ensure the quality of the service/product. The goal of any Quality Management System is the customer satisfaction, monitored through activities permitting to measure it, including written questionnaires, telephone interviews, statistics of complaints trends.
Through the definition of the processes it is possible to optimize the organization practices and related management.
During the development of QMS it is necessary to understand and recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the company, and to plan appropriate actions that allow to improve the entire process.
The key issue is to define immediately the mission and vision that the organization wants to carry on, to define the objectives of Quality within the Quality Policy. In the end, the Quality Manual is meant to describe the relations between the processes that compose the Management System.
The benefits of having a QMS are significant and concern, for example, the reduction of costs, the effective organization of resources and the consolidation of the process with customer loyalty.