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Michael Moyo, Correspondent
The Quality Management System (QMS) of the ISO9001 family of standards is ever evolving and it has recently been reviewed and published on 15 September 2015. A lot of ISO certified private businesses, government, non-governmental organisations and companies were given a 3 year grace period to migrate from the 2008 version to this new version.
On September 14, 2018 the old ISO9001:2008 version then expired. The question remains on what changed in the standard and how does a company in Zimbabwe implement this standard.
The solution is simple, in order for one to fully implement this standard they need to understand the contents of the standard itself.
The standard is based on the High Level Structure (HLS). In this format there are a number of clauses from 1 up to 10. These include; 1) Scope, 2) Normative references,
3) Terms and Definitions, 4) Context of the organisation, 5) Leadership, 6) Planning, 7) Support, 8) Operation, 9) Performance evaluation, and 10) Improvement respectively
The scope is the first clause and it details the boundaries of a management system. For example if applied in a typical service operation such as a Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) this would cover the operations of that particular place from incoming cooking raw materials until the customer purchases the finished food product such as French fries or chicken over the counter.
All other activities such as secondary distribution activities and dispatch can be excluded from the scope as long as they will not directly affect the quality of what is produced.
The “Normative references” clause simply detail all the literature which has been referenced by the standard and an example of such a standard is the ISO9000:2015 Quality Management Systems Fundamentals and Vocabulary. Examples of definitions that can be found in this document include quality, audit, corrective action, risk and opportunity. The “terms and definitions” clause supports the use of the terms as outlined in ISO9000:2015.
The next question is then where does one get the copy of both the ISO9001:2015 Quality Management Systems Requirements and ISO9000:2015 Quality Management Systems Fundamentals standards?
The answer is simple, these documents are published by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and can be purchased online on their website.
Secondly the standard is also published locally by our own Standards Association of Zimbabwe (SAZ). The next step will be to also find out on how to get certified from our own local certifying body or internationally.
– Michael Moyo is a Plant Systems Specialist for Delta Beverages Zimbabwe. He writes in his personal capacity as a practising expert in SHEQ Management systems. For comments and feedback he can be reached on +263776242569 and on e-mail: [email protected]
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