I want to find more about products certification and about quality system certifications ( ISO 9001).?

Question

To be more specific,i wanna know if the products certification is expensive or not and what is the puropose of these certifications(products or quality system). Are this compulsory or not? Could these certifications help my company and how is that?It has something to do with how many workers i've got in my company, it depands on this details?

Answer 1

ISO/QS/TS certification is certification of the Quality System, not the products. The ISO certifying bodies never certify products. In a nutshell, it means you have outlined and documented your entire process from conception, design, order-taking, production, testing, to delivery to the final customer - and depending on your product, warranty issues. It requires that everyone within the company follows the proper documentation as written. And this certification states you do the same thing the same way, everytime.

Certification is not expensive, but that is subjective. A certification audit is based on number of employess and how many auditors are sent. And it depends if you bring a consultant on-board to help. Consultants can add between $30 to $50 k to the cost. I know, I was a Quality Consultant that implemented many quality systems for customers.

Some customers require their suppliers to be ISO certified to do business with them. So it can be compulsory.

ISO certification is best for a company that doesn't have good control over their own processes. This could be due to poor management commitment, lazy employees, an engineering department that, although good, would need a massive overhaul to break them of bad habits such as poor filing systems, history of the past not documented but only in the heads of the team, poor follow through, and not meeting deadlines.

I have worked with companies that just needed to document what they were doing as their processes were understood by everyone, just not written to companies that couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag. A lot of controls had to be put in place - this can be difficult as people are trying to do their jobs with minimal support and now they have to implement changes.
If the manager of a department is not willing to help with this process, they are a detriment, not an asset. I have seen many Managers get fired during ISO implementation due to complacency.