The Key Issues of Implementation and Certification of ISO 9001 Quality
Control System in GEODIS BRNO, spol. s r.o.
by
Jiří Novák
Key words: ISO9001, documentation, certification, surveying,
photogrammetry, etc.
Abstract
"ISO 9001 Certified" - this statement is found on all the
commercial materials of GEODIS BRNO company. This statement is a
result of a lengthy and complex process signifying that GEODIS BRNO
and other companies have quality assurance and management programs
that meet the stringent conditions of the internationally accepted ISO
9000 standards. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. is one of the first private
companies which obtained this license to carry out geodetic and
photogrammetric services in the former Czech and Slovak Federative
Republic. The firm was founded in July 1990 as a Czech-Austrian
company. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. has three departments at this time:
Department of Photogrammetry, Department of Geodesy, and Commercial
Department. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. has been implementing quality control
system according to ISO 9001 standard since July 1997 and was
certified on June 1999 by TÜV Berlin.
This paper contains the following sections:
- the advantage of obtaining ISO 9000 Certification
- role of the consulting company in the implementation process of
Quality Control System
- "Key People" - key to successful certification
- documentation requirements for certification
These sections correspond to the crucial points of implementation
and certification process of Quality Control System,
identified by GEODIS during implementation process.
2. The Advantages of Obtaining ISO 9000 Certification
The ISO certification process includes an audit of a company's
quality systems by a third party. As ISO certification has been once
achieved, the process never ends. Auditors return on a regular basis
to verify that standards are being upheld. It is important to keep in
mind that ISO certifies the process leading to an acquisition of a
product or service, not the product or service itself.
The ISO 9000 standards cover all companies of all sizes, both
service and manufacturing. The standards comprise three standards:
- ISO 9001: Quality assurance in design, development, and
production
- ISO 9002: Quality assurance in production and installation
- ISO 9003: Quality assurance in final inspection and test
Within a company, ISO certification provides many benefits
concerning production, manufacturing, contracting with suppliers, and
legal requirements. Being registered to an ISO standard, the company's
energy focuses on quality and consistency.
In a world economy, where most companies depend increasingly on
other companies when providing parts of their products or services,
quality standards have become essential. The ISO 9000 standard is
rapidly becoming the quality standard throughout the world. More than
80 countries as diverse as England, Colombia, Canada, Germany, Israel,
and Turkey have adopted the ISO standards.
The ISO standards is a quality guarantee for the production process
and development of a product or service, not the product or service
itself. Perhaps the most cogent reason for seeking ISO certification
is the marketplace itself: customers are beginning to demand
certification.
3. Role of the Consulting Company in the Implementation Process of
Quality Control System
In the initial phase of the project implementation GEODIS decided
to take an advantage of the services provided by a consulting company.
According to the firmly set criteria, a consulting company of MBK
Brno, accredited in the PHARE Quality Program, was engaged. Its
accreditation ensured us not only about the good choice in the partner
searching phase, but also about the financial support provided by the
PHARE Fund for the implementation project of Quality Control System.
Our previous experience showed that the co-operation with experienced
supervisors significantly shortens and improves the preparation for
certification. The supervisors increased our confidence by using
Certification Company Methodology, by their experience with needed
certification standards, and by their ability to prepare us
sufficiently for the process.
4. Documentation Requirements for Certification
Documentation control is the critical element of International
Standards Organisation (ISO) certification. The greatest reason why
companies fail their ISO audit—document control problems—causes
twice as many failures as the second most common reason.
Documentation review is usually the second of six steps in the
certification process (application, documentation review,
pre-assessment, assessment, certification, and surveillance). If an
applicant fails the documentation review, the certification process
stops right there. The phases include 20 quality-system requirements
(sections. Each section contains this statement: "the supplier
shall establish and maintain documented procedures."
5. Conclusion: "Key People" - The Key to Successful
Certification
One of the key moments of the Quality System Implementation Process
is the individual responsibility of management staff and employees for
the introduction of different quality elements into the working
process. That was why the most experienced employees of the company
were involved in this process. Following the methodology of the
consulting company, a team of experienced and engaged "Key
People" was formed, and it was together with the team of internal
auditors trained by the consulting company at the beginning of the
implementation process. Thanks to the creative work of these people,
we managed to set current and introduce new procedures of Quality
Control as required by ISO Standards.
Ing. Jiří Novák
GEODIS BRNO, spol. s r.o.
Lazaretní 11a
61500 Brno
CZECH REPUBLIC
Tel. + 420 5 4521 2040
Fax. + 420 5 4521 2061
E-mail: jnovak@geodis.cz
Web site: http://www.vugtk.cz
The Key Issues of Implementation and Certification of ISO 9001 Quality
Control System in GEODIS BRNO, spol. s r.o.
1. INTRODUCTION
"ISO 9001 Certified" - this statement is found on all the
commercial materials of GEODIS BRNO company. This statement is a
result of a lengthy and complex process signifying that GEODIS BRNO
and other companies have quality assurance and management programs
that meet the stringent conditions of the internationally accepted ISO
9000 standards. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. is one of the first private
companies which obtained this licence to carry out geodetic and
photogrammetric services in the former Czech and Slovak Federative
Republic. The firm was founded in July 1990 as a Czech-Austrian
company. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. has three departments at this time:
Department of Photogrammetry, Department of Geodesy, and Commercial
Department. GEODIS BRNO, Ltd. has been implementing quality control
system according to ISO 9001 standard since July 1997 and was
certified on June 1999 by TÜV Berlin.
This paper contains the following sections:
- the advantage of obtaining ISO 9000 Certification
- role of the consulting company in the implementation process of
Quality Control Systém
- documentation requirements for certification
- "Key People" - key to successful certification
These sections correspond to the crucial points of implementation
and certification process of Quality Control System,
identified by GEODIS during implementation process.
2. THE ADVANTAGES OF OBTAINING ISO 9000 CERTIFICATION
The ISO certification process includes an audit of a company's
quality systems by a third party. As ISO certification has been once
achieved, the process never ends. Auditors return on a regular basis
to verify that standards are being upheld. It is important to keep in
mind that ISO certifies the process leading to an acquisition of a
product or service, not the product or service itself.
The ISO 9000 standards cover all companies of all sizes, both
service and manufacturing. The standards comprise three standards:
- ISO 9001: Quality assurance in design, development, and
production
- ISO 9002: Quality assurance in production and installation
- ISO 9003: Quality assurance in final inspection and test
Within a company, ISO certification provides many benefits
concerning production, manufacturing, contracting with suppliers, and
legal requirements. Being registered to an ISO standard, the company's
energy focuses on quality and consistency.
In a world economy, where most companies depend increasingly on
other companies when providing parts of their products or services,
quality standards have become essential. The ISO 9000 standard is
rapidly becoming the quality standard throughout the world. More than
80 countries as diverse as England, Colombia, Canada, Germany, Israel,
and Turkey have adopted the ISO standards.
The ISO standards is a quality guarantee for the production process
and development of a product or service, not the product or service
itself. Perhaps the most cogent reason for seeking ISO certification
is the marketplace itself: customers are beginning to demand
certification.
3. ROLE OF THE CONSULTING COMPANY IN THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS OF
QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEM
In the initial phase of the project implementation GEODIS decided
to take an advantage of the services provided by a consulting company.
According to the firmly set criteria, a consulting company of MBK Brno,
accredited in the PHARE Quality Program, was engaged. Its
accreditation ensured us not only about the good choice in the partner
searching phase, but also about the financial support provided by the
PHARE Fund for the implementation project of Quality Control System.
Our previous experience showed that the co-operation with experienced
supervisors significantly shortens and improves the preparation for
implementation. The supervisors increased our confidence by using
Certification Company Methodology, by their experience with needed
certification standards, and by their ability to prepare us
sufficiently for the process.
4. DOCUMENTATION REQUIREMENTS FOR CERTIFICATION
Documentation control is a critical element of International
Standards Organisation (ISO) certification. The greatest reason why
companies fail their ISO audit—document control problems—causes
twice as many failures as the second most common reason.
Documentation review is usually the second of six steps in the
certification process (application, documentation review,
pre-assessment, assessment, certification, and surveillance). If an
applicant fails the documentation review, the certification process
stops right there. The phases include 20 quality-system requirements
(sections). Each section contains this statement: "the supplier
shall establish and maintain documented procedures."
ISO 9000 registration requires four levels of documentation:
- Level I consists of a quality manual that outlines what a
company plans to achieve and outlines the policies it plans to
implement to achieve its goal.
- Level II outlines procedures the company will follow, what
employees will do, in what order, by whom, and with what results,
structured to reflect the process flow of events.
- Level III consists of detailed work instructions—specific
written information on how to do a particular task.
- Level IV consists of reference material and information not in
other categories. In GEODIS, this information includes quality
records, forms, and so forth.
The complete process of ISO 90000 implementation and certification
typically takes about two years. Certification is achieved through an
on-site audit and assessment of the company's quality system by
independent auditors, including the quality policy, quality system
documentation, and quality records.. When performing the document
review, auditors look at the following:
- Intent of ISO 9000 standard. How well does a documented system
stand against the ISO standard?
- Implementation. Do people within the company follow the
documentation? Is the documentation readily available?
- Effectiveness. How well does a documented system work?
But there are also some general requirements for the documentation
itself. We can summarise this requirements as follows:
- Documentation must be controlled.
- Documentation must be available for auditors' perusal.
- Documentation must be easily accessible.
- Documentation versioning is necessary.
- Evidence of approval for each document must be available.
- A master list identifying revision status of documents must be
readily available.
Looking closer at these requirements your first idea will be
probably to find some fully automated documentation control software
system which would provide you with all of the necessary services
mentioned above. Unfortunately there is not too many systems on the
market which are able to solve what you need to be solved and at the
same time fit in the budget of small or medium company with its price.
Actually there was no system like this in the Czech market at the time
when it was necessary to manage this demand in GEODIS. Our decision
was to try to find at least some version control system and set up the
methodology how to use such system as document control system. Our
first choice after careful analyses of the system features and
properties was Microsoft Visual Source Safe. Visual SourceSafe
provides all this required functionality and even more.
The top ten reasons for using Visual SourceSafe as a document
control system:
- It is available for multiple platforms, including the Windows®
95 operating system; Windows 3.1 and Windows NT® operating system
for Intel, MIPS, and Alpha AXP and Macintosh®.
- It stores any kind of file, whether text or binary.
- It provides both a graphical user interface and a command line
interface.
- It uses a small set of commands that are intuitive and easily
mastered.
- It is designed to work in client-server environments. Typically,
the Visual SourceSafe database resides on a server. Client
installations contain the executables and auxiliary files
necessary to gain access to the database.
- It tracks the history of every change to every file and every
project.
- It contains a highly customisable, easy-to-use security system.
- It is easy to view the contents of a file.
- It is easy to generate reports containing the revision history
of any file in its database.
- It has an enormous capacity for files, holding over 8,000 files
in a single project and as many files and projects in its database
as your hard disk can hold.
The Visual SourceSafe version-control system features an
easy-to-use interface that is similar in appearance and use to the
Windows 95 Explorer.
Visual SourceSafe is a version control system with a difference:
rather than being file-oriented, like most version control systems, it
is project-oriented. This means that in addition to performing actions
on individual files, you can deal with files as a group—a much more
efficient way to control documents. Instead of a separate operation
for each file, you have just one operation for a group. If a
particular project contains a dozen files, you can check out all
twelve from storage with one command rather than with twelve separate
commands.
All files are stored in the Visual SourceSafe database, but only
the most recent version of a file is stored in its entirety. Only the
changes to previous versions are stored in the reverse delta
system. This system saves space on your hard disk. When an older
version of a file is needed, Visual SourceSafe can easily recreate
that version.
Visual SourceSafe contains a large number of tools to simplify the
task of version control and document storage. These tools include a
report generator, a history tool for showing history of projects or
individual files, tools to identify differences between versions of
files, a tool for finding strings in text files, and a tool for
viewing files.
Utilising this system in the first steps of implementation of ISO
9001 we find out that thanks to its project oriented approach we can
easily use this system to control production of our projects. Our
original idea was to use this system only for the first two levels of
ISO 9000 documentation but nowadays we are using this system in all
the production process of our company.
5. CONCLUSION: "KEY PEOPLE" - THE KEY TO SUCCESFULL
CERTIFICATION
One of the key moments of the Quality System Implementation Process
is the individual responsibility of management staff and employees for
the introduction of different quality elements into the working
process. That was why the most experienced employees of the company
were involved in this process. Following the methodology of the
consulting company, a team of experienced and engaged "Key
People" was formed, and it was together with the team of internal
auditors trained by the consulting company at the beginning of the
implementation process. Thanks to the creative work of these people,
we managed to set current and introduce new procedures of Quality
Control as required by ISO Standards.
Ing. Jiří Novák
GEODIS BRNO, spol. s r.o.
E-mail: jnovak@geodis.cz
Web site: http://www.geodis.cz
26 April 2000
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