Quality Assurance Certification: Why You Need It

Who Benefits from Quality Assurance (QA) Standards and How?

The implementation of quality assurance standards is not only beneficial for businesses and customers but also for the economy.

Businesses:

Quality assurance certification can help raise the bottom line of every business. Most of the successful organisations, irrespective of their fields, recognise the QA standards as an eminent part of their business strategy that helps them to manage quality, workers’ safety, environmental compliance, information security and many other aspects. Standardisation aides in implementation of effective management systems, which minimises errors, eliminats redundancies, reduces inconsistencies in processes, and ensures timely delivery of quality products or services.

Customers:

The implementation of quality assurance system standards by businesses provides customers with a lot of confidence in the products or services being provided. By achieving an international QA certification, a company clearly demonstrates that it is committed to providing quality products or services to their customers and ensuring their needs are met.

Economy:

Businesses complying with QA standards will demonstrate that their products, services, and processes are compatible for global trading. Thus, these certifications can provide companies with access to global markets and open up a door of opportunities to expand their business. When more companies or organisations in an economy are certified, it raises the potential of the economy to facilitate overseas trade, as well as attract partnerships and investments from different economies worldwide.

How to Successfully Establish Quality Assurance System?

The success of a quality assurance system depends on the commitment and participation of organisational management. The top management must be involved directing in implementing, operating, and reviewing the quality assurance system.

Management of an organisation will need to:

• Define a meaningful quality policy with set of objectives, and ensure that both policys and objectives are communicated to employees of the organisation at every level
• Document the key processes of the system and define roles/responsibilities of each employee who will be in charge of it
• Provide adequate resources, training, and time to quality management personnel who will be implementing the system
• Ensure that the system is appropriately implemented based on the requirements of the standard and meets customer expectations and organisational goals
• Conduct scheduled and regular interviews of the system to assess its effectiveness, compliance, compatibility with other processes, and competence in achieving the key performance metrics
• Decide new actions or corrective measures to improve the system for continual performance improvement

ISO 9001: Best Quality Assurance System Standard

ISO provides a general standard framework for businesses to assure quality via a process-based approach and risk management. It sets out requirements for their quality assurance systems which enable organisations to benchmark quality of their products or services, as well as meet regulatory and statutory conditions. ISO 9001 standard aims at empowering organisations with a happy customer base by helping them to exceed their quality expectations.

Key principles around which ISO 9001 quality assurance system is based are:

• 1. Customer focus
• 2. Leadership
• 3. Process approach
• 4. Participation of people
• 5. Continual improvement
• 6. Fact-based or evidence-based decision-making
• 7. Relationship management