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Quality management is at the root of every high-performing business’s success. ISO 9001 quality management system (QMS) certification supports an organization’s efforts to increase efficiency and improve the customer experience. A rigorous approach to quality management, including ISO 9001 certification, wins customer loyalty and boosts your brand’s reputation.
What Is ISO 9001?
Certifications are helpful tools that can add credibility to claims about the quality of products and services. Some industries require certification as a contractual or legal requirement.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an independent, non-governmental international organization of 165 national standards bodies (not individuals or companies) that share knowledge and develop voluntary, market-relevant, consensus-based international standards that provide solutions to global challenges while supporting innovation.
ISO 9001 certification recognizes QMS individual companies design around their specific products, services, risks, and customer needs. Certification is an essential building block for any organization looking to improve risk and quality management. It works to:
Improve customer satisfaction by focusing on quality objectives.
Boost organization efficiency through quality management and core business processes alignment.
Attain continual improvement through annual audits.
Effectively manage risk by cultivating company-wide risk-based thinking.
Empower employees through active participation in improving quality management.
External certification bodies, not the ISO, perform 9001 certification and issue certificates. ISO itself merely develops the international standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001.
What Is the Difference Between ISO 9001 and ISO 14001?
ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 have many similarities but don’t align clause-for-clause.
ISO 9001 is QMS that gives organizations a systematic approach for providing consistent quality and meeting customer expectations.
ISO 14001 is an environmental management system (EMS) that provides organizations with a systematic approach for measuring and improving their environmental impact.
Both systems include things like training, internal auditing, management review, and documented systems on how a company plans to achieve improvements. They differ, though, in their approach and degree of remedy on issues like environmental planning, local, state, and federal compliance requirements, and management’s responsibilities, which are more extensive under ISO 14001.
To achieve certification in either ISO 9001 or ISO 14001, a company must meet or exceed the criteria set out by the ISO. It’s important to keep in mind that both sets of standards are measures of the processes used by a company, not the end-product.
For ISO 9001 certification, those standards must be met or exceeded in quality management systems, resource management, management responsibility, and how an organization measures, analyzes, and improves quality performance.
Instead of fixed criteria, ISO 14001 certifications are based on a model of continual improvement. To achieve 14001 certification, a company must develop an ISO 14001-compliant EMS through planning objectives and implementation, measurement, and monitoring processes.
The path to accreditation and methods of maintaining the systems once certification has been achieved are similar across both standards.
UBQ Materials Certified to ISO 9001 Quality Management System
Following an audit by an external certifying authority, UBQ Materials is proud to announce it has achieved ISO 9001 certification for its entire patented process of converting landfill-destined waste into a sustainable, climate-positive, bio-based thermoplastic material used as a substitute for conventional plastics, wood, and concrete in the manufacturing of thousands of everyday products.
A diverse range of manufacturers, including the fast-food industry, household goods industry, and automotive industry, have successfully incorporated UBQ’s thermoplastic into their applications. And because our bio-based materials integrate into existing manufacturing infrastructure, they’ve done it without the necessity of significant investment in new equipment. To learn more about ISO 9001 quality management system certification or the UBQ process, get in touch with us today.
