What is ISO 9001

Welcome to our website, we have set out to provide a useful guide to explain what ISO 9001 is and how it can benefit your organisation.

ISO 9001 is one of the standards within the range of ISO 9000 standards.

We are a UKAS accredited certification body, so before you consider getting started, talk to us to find out how we can help you.

ISO 9001: 2008 standards replaced the previous ISO 9001: 2000 and its objective is to provide quality management systems that will be of real benefit to your organisation to help manage your business effectively and put in place best practice methodology.

ISO 9001 accreditation will give your organisation the quality systems that will provide the foundation to better customer satisfaction, staff motivation and continual improvement.

The ISO 9001 certificate is suitable for all sizes of organisation and is well established around the world as an invaluable quality management system. It is suitable for organisations in all industry sectors and will help your organisation to improve management processes to compete locally and/or globally.

The process encompasses the entire organisation and requires senior management buy-in, it is not just a function of the Quality Department. To achieve ISO 9001 certification your organisation needs to demonstrate that it can meet the regulatory requirements and apply the system effectively to be of real benefit to your customers.

ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems	OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health & Safety Systems	ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems	ISO 27001 Information Security Management Systems

Scope
As an ISO 9001 certified organisation you will have implemented quality management system requirements for all areas of the business including:

•    Facilities
•    People
•    Training
•    Services
•    Equipment

Continual Assessment
Achieving ISO 9001 standards is the first step of a process of continual improvement that will provide your organisation with the necessary management tools to improve working practices throughout the entire organisation.

UKAS accreditation
You will need to appoint a person to help you to carry out the internal assessments, assist in writing up the Quality Manual and procedures, and help you with getting certified.

ISO 9001 auditor
When you are satisfied that your entire organisation is working within the guidelines of the quality management system, it is time to call in an ISO 9001 auditor. The audit can be done by a number of Certification bodies, however it is important to note that not all ISO 9001 auditing organisations are UKAS accredited. If you do not use a UKAS accredited auditor your certification could end up being worthless.

ACS Registrars have UKAS accreditation, for more information see our main website.