MAKING QUALITY A PRIORITY: THE IMPORTANCE OF ISO

Aircel is one of India’s leading innovative mobile service providers in the telecom space. Anoop is a motivated self-starter and performance-driven professional who helps in negotiating & securing favorable deals with providing general legal counsel, and driving business to new areas and elevations.

- Anoop Garg

A Drive for Continuous Improvement

The ISO family addresses various aspects of quality management and contains some of ISO’s best-known standards. The standards provide guidance and tools for companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services are reliable.

According to an ISO survey from 122 countries, Customer satisfaction is the main reason companies get ISO 9001 certification, followed by market need, mandated customer requirement, and self-declared conformance. The survey found that the most important benefits of ISO 9001 were improved customer satisfaction and standardized business processes.

Companies know ISO standards may be good for them, but they may need motivation to get certified. Manufacturing sectors have adopted ISO 9000 for three reasons;

(a) The value of the standard,

(b) The sales and marketing advantage, and

(c) Company requirements.

This ISO standard is based on a number of quality management principles including a strong customer focus, the motivation and implication of the top management, the process approach and continual improvement.

Companies appreciate how the standard can improve their business processes and reduce scrap, rework and cost. Second, manufacturers with similar products, service and price use the certification to differentiate themselves from their competitors. It gives you a marketing advantage over the competition. It’s a differentiator.

Sector-specific applications of ISO 9001

ISO has a range of standards for quality management systems that are based on ISO 9001 and adapted to specific sectors and industries and these include;

ISO/TS 29001 – Petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries

ISO 13485 – Medical devices

ISO/IEC 90003 – Software engineering

ISO 17582 – Electoral organizations at all levels of government