Quality Management with ISO 9001 – The 7 Key Principles

/in , /by

In the last article we found out that ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). And that most businesses use this standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently supply products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements.

In this article we are going to look at seven focus areas to help to businesses to keep these standards ISO 9001 has seven key principles that it pushes as important:

Engagement of people

Making sure the management system involves your team

Senior management aren’t the only people who ISO 9001 is for. Your whole organisation contribute towards it’s processes. If you wanted to fully benefit from your quality management ISO then you are going to need to openly discuss issues and share knowledge and experience with your team. It is paramount that everyone in your company understands their contribution to its success and feels valued for it. This will demonstrate your businesses commitment to improving quality and will help to achieve certification.

You could possibly want to consider some awareness training to help to raise awareness of ISO 9001 and the benefits it brings. There are plenty of online courses that could be very informative and useful for your business personnel.

Customer Focus

Focus on your customers and their needs

A really great way of showing your commitment to quality us developing a strong customer focus. So that you can strengthen your business and its performance even further it is very important to gather customer feedback good or bad. This can help you to spot non conformities and improve your processes.

Your company should take into account not only the interests of the consumers, but also those of other stakeholders, including owners, employees, suppliers, investors, and the general public.

Leadership

Develop s strong management team

Strong leadership entails having a distinct vision for the future of your business. Effectively communicating this vision will guarantee that every team member is working toward the same goals, providing your organisation a sense of unity. As a result, employee motivation and productivity may increase.

Process Approach

Create a process culture

The ISO 9001 Standard’s Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) principle will assist you in fostering a process-driven culture throughout your organisation. This is a tried-and-true method to guarantee that you efficiently plan, resource, and manage your processes and interactions.

You may align operations for improved efficiency and make it easier to reach your goals by managing the many sections of your organisation as a whole. You can find areas for improvement by measuring and analysing these interconnected processes.

Improvement

Drive continual improvement

The ISO 9001 quality management system depends on continuous improvement, which is why it should be your company’s main goal. You can uncover ways to enhance and strengthen your business by putting processes in place for identifying risks and opportunities, spotting and resolving non-conformities, and measuring and monitoring your efforts.

Evidence-Based Decision Making

Base your decisions on facts

Making informed judgments requires access to accurate and trustworthy data. For instance, you need the appropriate evidence to identify the underlying reason of a non-conformity. Ensure that individuals who require information can access it and maintain open lines of communication.

Relationship Management

Develop mutually beneficial relationships with suppliers

It’s possible for your suppliers to give you a competitive edge, but this demands a partnership based on trust. Long-term, mutually beneficial methods must be balanced with short-term financial rewards in order to forge such enduring partnerships with suppliers and other interested parties.

Benefits of the Quality Principles

During the ISO 9001 certification process, putting these seven quality concepts into practise can assist you in fulfilling important Standard requirements. As a result, you will be able to raise employee engagement and productivity, customer happiness and loyalty, and resource usage.

By putting these seven quality concepts into practise, you may help yourself meet crucial Standard requirements during the ISO 9001 certification process. You will be able to increase resource consumption, customer satisfaction and loyalty, employee engagement, and productivity as a result.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step.  Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

So we can act as either your IT department or to supplement an existing IT department. We pride ourselves in developing long term relationships that add value to your business with high quality managed support, expert strategic advice, and professional project management.

Quality Management with ISO 9001 – What is it?

/in , /by

The Quality Management Systems (QMS) creation worldwide standard, ISO 9001, was released by ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). The current standard is referred to as ISO 9001:2015 as it was most recently updated in 2015. For ISO 9001 to be produced and updated, it needed to be approved by the majority of member nations in order to be recognised as an international standard, which means it is accepted by most nations on the planet.

What are quality management systems? An ISO 9001 description would be that this standard provides the QMS requirements to be implemented for a business that wants to develop all of the policies, processes, and procedures required to offer products and services that fulfil customer and regulatory needs and enhance customer satisfaction. The cornerstone of quality assurance activities is quality management systems.

Why is ISO 9001 important?

As was already said, ISO 9001:2015 is a widely accepted standard for developing, implementing, and upholding a company’s quality management system. It can be utilised by any business and is intended for usage by organisations of any size and in any sector. Because it is an accepted international standard, many organisations demand this certification from their suppliers as the foundation for any business creating a system to guarantee customer happiness and progress.

Your consumers will feel more secure knowing that you have a Quality Management System in place that is based on the seven ISO 9001 quality management principles if you hold a SO 9001 certification. In fact, ISO 9001 is so important and prominent that it serves as the foundation for other industry standards to be developed by groupings of companies, such as AS9100 for the aerospace industry, ISO 13485 for the medical devices sector, and IATF 16949 for the automobile industry.

What is the current ISO 9001 standard?

The ISO 9001:2015 version of the standard is the most recent one. The previous revision, ISO 9001:2008, was replaced by the ISO 9001:2015 standard, which is also referred to as ISO 9001 revision 2015. Many of the procedures from the earlier iteration of the standard are included in this updated revision, which places more emphasis on risk-based thinking and an awareness of the organization’s context. A significant structural modification from the ISO 9001:2008 standard was made to enable this transition; the key clauses of the standard are different between the 2015 and 2008 iterations.

What is the purpose of ISO?

It is a very common question to ask what the purpose of ISO is. ISO is an international organisation that creates a commonly recognised set of requirements and guidelines to assist organisations around the globe to act more consistently. More than 22,450 standards are created, published, and maintained by the ISO organisation through technical committees made up of people from all around the world. These standards offer guidance on how to develop management systems, conduct certain testing, and design and construct products.

ISO does not go around assessing companies on these aforementioned standards. The ISO only participates in the maintenance of the standards; it leaves the evaluation of businesses in relation to the standards to outside certification organisations.

In the next article we will look in depth into the most important requirements of ISO and how to best implement them into your business.

We’re 4TC Managed IT Services

4TC can support you with all the services you need to run your business effectively, from email and domain hosting to fully managing your whole IT infrastructure.

Setting up a great IT infrastructure is just the first step.  Keeping it up to date, safe and performing at its peak requires consistent attention.

So we can act as either your IT department or to supplement an existing IT department. We pride ourselves in developing long term relationships that add value to your business with high quality managed support, expert strategic advice, and professional project management.

Your Android smartphone could be your biggest Word or PowerPoint helper

/in /by

Small quality-of-life feature could change the way you use Microsoft 365

Microsoft has announced a new, more convenient way to pull images from Android devices, such as smartphones, into documents and spreadsheets made with the web versions of Word and Powerpoint found in Microsoft 365.

In a post on the Office Insiders blog, the company revealed that it will soon be possible for users of Microsoft’s online online collaboration tool to link their Android photo libraries to a Microsoft account using a one-time set up process. 

For now, the feature is only available to personal users, in addition to enterprise and education organizations, who have opted into the Office Insiders program, which gives users early access to exciting but experimental new features within the company’s office software suite.

Microsoft 365 and Android integration

While at a glance this might seem like an exclusive club, with some business and education users may be out of luck due to their organization’s Microsoft Office configuration, it’s not too hard to enrol so long as a user has full control over their system. 

For personal users, the Office Insider program is a simple opt-in, to be found on the product information page within Microsoft 365.

Once that’s done, linking your Android photo library to your Microsoft account is a simple process, so long as your Android device has the means to scan a QR code with its camera and install the Link to Windows app on the Google Play Store. 

Luckily, these are features that will come as standard on most, if not all, recent business smartphones.

The new feature promises to be robust and intuitive, supporting the same image sizes, dimensions, and file types currently supported by Word and Powerpoint on the web. It will also allow users to replace existing images in documents with those on mobile devices.

The feature will eventually be available to all users of Office on the web who have a Microsoft 365 subscription, use an android phone, and, if they are using the Mozilla Firefox web browser, are using version 104.0 or later.

Source – Your Android smartphone could be your biggest Word or PowerPoint helper | TechRadar

WordPress updates its website builder for the third time this year

/in /by

WordPress 6.1 adds improvements to website accessibility and more

Open source CMS WordPress.org has released WordPress 6.1 “Misha” in a bid to expand the block editing experience introduced earlier this year in WordPress 5.9 and WordPress 6.0.

Named after the Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin, WordPress 6.1 includes additional updates to its website builder, offering a new default block theme that features ten style variations designed by WordPress community members.

The release also includes new writing features that allow users to select partial paragraphs in a block, and has a keyboard shortcut to add internal links expanded to all blocks.

WordPress site builder upgrade 

With contributions from over 800 people around the world, WordPress 6.1 has been designed to ensure that users can apply a different look and feel to a website within a single theme.

Available now, WordPress 6.1 also offers a suite of new templates that users can create directly from the Site Editor, including custom templates for posts and pages. 

“Additional improvements to the editor give creators and developers more control and customization for site-building while offering a more cohesive experience to users,” said Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress Executive Director.

The update also includes fluid typography that lets web creators set one font size to scale on any screen size, which can be enabled through theme.json, a configuration file for block themes.

“As of WordPress 6.1, block based template parts can be used in traditional WordPress themes, allowing both site owners and plugin and theme authors to adopt what they need as they are ready in a way that is still future forward. A theme needs to specify the block-template-parts theme support to enable this feature,” a WordPress.org press release added.

WordPress.org has also improved the layout and visualization of document settings to help content creators easily view and manage important post and page settings.

Source – WordPress updates its website builder for the third time this year | TechRadar