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Generic means that the same standards can be applied to any organization, large or small, whatever its product – including whether its “product” is actually a service – in any sector of activity, and whether it is a business enterprise, a public administration, or a government department.

Management system refers to what the organization does to manage its processes or activities in order that the products or services that it produces meet the objectives it has set itself, such as the following:

satisfying the customer’s quality requirements, complying to regulations, or meeting environmental objectives.

In a very small organization, there is probably no “system”, as such, just “our way of doing things”, and “our way” is probably not written down, but all in the head of the manager or owner head. The larger the organization, and the more people involved, the more the likelihood that there are some written procedures, instructions, forms or records. These help ensure that everyone is not just “doing his or her own thing”, and that the organization goes about its business in an orderly and structured way, so that time, money and other resources are utilized efficiently.

ISO standards are voluntary. As a non-governmental organization, ISO has no legal authority to enforce their implementation.

 

ISO 9000

 

ISO 9000 is primarily concerned with quality management. As per ISO the standard definition of quality refers to all features of product or service witch are required by the customer. Quality management means what the organization does to ensure that its particular services satisfy the customer quality requirement and comply with any regulation applicable to those product or services.

 

There are three primary standards in ISO 9000 series

ISO 9000: Quality Management Systems – Concepts and Vocabulary ISO 9001: Quality Management Systems – Requirements ISO 9004: Quality Management Systems – Guidelines

An organization can obtain ISO 9001 certification by implementing quality management system requirements in its organization. ISO 9001 is an internationally accepted management system and its aim is to

provide  product /service as per customer requirements obtain customer satisfaction continual improvement comply with applicable regulatory requirements

 

The standard has five main sections as follows and each section has many subsection or clauses.

Quality management system Management responsibility Resource management Product realization Measurement, analysis and improvement.

 

This international standard promotes the adoption of the process approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness of a quality management system to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirement.

 

An activity using resources, and managed in order to enable the transformation of inputs into outputs, can be considered as a process. Often output of a process directly forms the input to the next. The application of a system of processes within an organization, together with the identification and interactions of these processes, and their management, can be referred as process approach.

 

Process approach provides linkage between individual processes within the system of processes as well as over their combination and interaction. When used in quality management system such an approach emphasizes the importance of

understanding and meeting requirements, the need to consider processes in terms of added value, obtaining results of process performance and effectiveness, continual improvement of processes based on objective measurement.

  

 

ISO 14000

 

ISO 14000 is primarily concerned with environmental management. This means that the organization does to minimize harmful effects on environment caused by its activities.

 

ISO 14001 is one of the standard of ISO 14000 series and it is

 “Environmental Management Systems – Specification with Guidance for Use”.

It is intended that the implementation of an environmental management system (EMS) based on this standard will result in improved environmental performance and an organization can obtain certificate on successful implementation of this standard in its organization.

 

This international standard is based on the methodology known as Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). PDCA can be briefly described as follows

 

 

 

 

 

Plan: establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with organization’s environmental policy

 

Do: implement the processes

 

Check: monitor and measure processes against environmental policy, objectives, targets, legal and other requirements and report the results.

 

Act: take actions to continually improve performance of the environmental system.

 

To implement ISO 14001 an organization will

 

prepare environmental policy and the policy must states

·        prevention of pollution

·        compliance of regulatory requirements

·        continuous improvement of environment.

identify the environmental aspects in its activities and prepare management program for the aspects which have significant impact on environment. (aspects are elements of an organization’s activities, products or services which can interact with the environment and impact is  any change to the environment whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from an organization’s environmental aspects) identify applicable legal and other requirements related to its environmental aspects and take actions to comply with those. set objectives and targets consistent with the environmental policy including prevention of pollution and to compliance with the legal and other requirements. ensure availability of resources to implement, maintain and improve the environmental management system. Resources include human resources and specialized skills, organizational infrastructure, technology and financial resources. provide training to concerned personnel associated with its environmental aspects and environmental management system. communicates with regards to its environmental aspects and environmental management system internally in the organization and externally to interested parties. keep documents including records necessary to ensure effective planning, operation, and control of processes that relates to environmental aspects. control the documents for effective use establish implement and maintain a procedure(s) to identify potential emergency situation and accidents that can have impact on environment and how it will respond to them. implement and maintain a procedure to monitor and measure on a regular basis the key characteristics of its operation that can have significant environmental impact.   implement and maintain a procedure to identify and investigation of nonconformities and for taking corrective and preventive actions. implement and maintain a procedure for identification, storage, protection, retrieval, retention and disposal of records. conduct internal audit at planned intervals for implementation of environmental management system. review the organizations environmental system at planned intervals in presence of top management to ensure its continuing stability, adequacy and effectiveness and take appropriate action for continual improvement.  

 

NB: Both ISO 9000 and 14000 concern the way an organization goes about its work and directly result of its work, in other words they both concern processes  and not product

- at least not directly. Nevertheless the way in which the organization manages its processes is obviously going to affect its final product or service. Neither ISO 9000 nor 14000 are product standards. The management system of these families’ state requirements for what the organization must do to manage processes influencing quality (ISO 9000) or the processes influencing the impact of the organization activities on the environment.

 

Certification, registration and accreditation

In the context of ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001:2004, “certification” refers to the issuing of written assurance (the certificate) by an independent, external body that has audited an organization’s management system and verified that it conforms to the requirements specified in the standard. “Registration” means that the auditing body then records the certification in its client register.

Certification” seems to be the term most widely used worldwide, although registration (from which “registrar” as an alternative to registration/certification body) is often preferred in North America, and the two are also used interchangeably.

 

On the contrary, using “accreditation” as an interchangeable alternative for certification or registration is a mistake, because it means something different. In the ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001:2004 context, accreditation refers to the formal recognition by a specialized body – an accreditation body – that a certification body is competent to carry out ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001:2004 certification in specified business sectors. In simple terms, accreditation is like certification of the certification body.

 

ISO itself does not carry out assessments or audits to check that its standards are being implemented by users in conformity with the requirements of the standards. ISO does not issue ISO 9001:2000 or ISO 14001:2004 certificates.

The auditing and certification of management systems is carried out independently of ISO by more than 750 certification bodies active around the world. ISO has no authority to control their activities. The ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 14001:2004 certificates issued by certification bodies are issued under their own responsibility and not under ISO’s name.