Quality certification

In the last lesson – Standards in the workplace – we talked about the Australian Standards used in the timber industry to define product specifications and work processes.

Companies that want to demonstrate to their customers that they have strong quality credentials are often certified against the international standard: ISO 9001.

This standard forms part of the ISO 9000 series of standards, published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The series focuses on a range of quality management system (QMS) principles. ISO 9001 sets out the specific requirements that companies must meet in order to be certified as compliant with these quality principles.

Although ISO 9001 can be applied to businesses of any size, it tends to be used by large companies with complex systems of operation, since the documentation required is extensive and time-consuming to maintain. Nonetheless, for companies involved in large supply contracts, this certification scheme provides evidence to prospective clients that the company is using ‘industry best practices’ in its systems of quality management.