We had a customer ask us this week about obtaining “ASO certification”. Here, in a nutshell, is what we said in reply:

“We’re unfamiliar with ‘ASO’ certification (one of my cohorts “googled” the acronym and didn’t think any of the results fit, so we assumed they meant “ISO” – if we’re wrong, we’ll hear about it). However, if a company wants to obtain ‘ISO’ certification, it has to do the following:

1. Develop a quality management system (QMS);
2. Implement the QMS and collect data;
3. Review the data collected and use it to drive improvement;
4. After several cycles of the QMS, you should have an indication of whether it’s working. When you’re sure it is…
5. Apply for a certification audit.  Your country’s ISO member body should have information on certifying bodies, registrars, etc.;
6. A few weeks after you’ve been through the audit, the certication auditor will tell you if you passed (or if you didn’t, where you were weak and need improvement). If you passed, ring the bell! Have a party! Tell all your friends (Facebook and real), family, and business associates! Your Quality Management System is now ISO certified! And…
7. In the event you didn’t pass, make the necessary changes (at the bare minimum) and reapply for a certification audit.

One thing we didn’t tell the customer initially is, “Don’t have unrealistic expectations.” Developing and utilizing the QMS — as well as the subsequent audit — are going to take time and effort.

If you’re doing it purely for marketing’s sake, if you think you can knock out a QMS and pass a certification audit in a matter of months…you’re in for a load of grief. You’ll never get a solid QMS under you AND you’ll never make deadlines, because they’re unrealistic.

If you build a QMS because you want to provide your customers with the best everything — if customers are the reason for everything you do, including the QMS – you’ll take the time you need to get it right, you won’t set unrealistic goals and deadlines, and you won’t drive yourself crazy trying to figure out why you never meet expectations.

OK, so they’re not really easy steps…but the concept itself isn’t at all complicated. Each of the steps above is broken down into successively smaller pieces (things, activities, people, etc.) but if you start with the “big picture” and keep the big picture handy, you’ll do fine. Refer to it continually as you build. That’s where a lot of companies go wrong — they focus on just one part of the whole story as if that were the whole story, like the blind men and the elephant.

Keep your perspective. Remember — you’re in it for the long haul.  Best of luck in your QMS journey, and let us know if you’d like our help.

There are occasionally stories in the quality world about ISO 9001 Registrars handing out ISO 9001 certificates, but who are not properly accredited.  Believe it or not, there are unscrupulous people and businesses that are willing to take advantage of those who have not done their homework.

As many of you know, ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is not actually involved in granting ISO certifications.  ISO creates standards, they are not in the business of enforcing them.  Other organizations actually handle the process of granting ISO certification.

Worldwide, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) is the organization that handles all the facets associated with granting ISO 9001 Certification.  The IAF works with national or regional bodies, which in turn accredit registration bodies that go out and audit organizations for compliance to the ISO 9001 standard.

Here in the U.S., the American National Standards Institute and the American Society of Quality cooperate to form the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board, known as ANAB.  They accredit registration organizations, attempting to ensure consistency and compliance in ISO 9001 registration auditing.

Make sure you registrar is ANAB accredited

When you hire an ISO auditor for ISO 9001 certification, be sure to verify that they are accredited by ANAB or whatever the equivalent of ANAB is in your country or region (you can find a list of members at the IAF website, http://www.iaf.nu/).  And your registration certificate should have the ANAB and the IAF logos on it.  Without them, you are not truly ISO 9001 certified.

Make sure your ISO 9001 Certificate will have the IAF and ANAB seals

This is exciting! We are putting our Social Media presence to test. The last couple of weeks we’ve been blogging about our successful ISO 9001 audit. Yesterday we got our ISO 9001 registration number and certificate. Bizmanualz is officially an ISO 9001:2008 Certified Company!

We’d obviously like to promote our ISO certification in various ways, including our product covers. After much deliberations, we’ve settled on an emblem signifying our ISO registraiton. Now we need your help to figure out which placement of the emblem on our product cover makes more sense. Here are two cover images, the first one (A) with the emblem placed right next to the Bizmanualz log. The second one (B) has the emblem placed on the right of the main image.

We’d like your feedback on which placement looks better. Please click on the poll that follows the pictures to give your opinions. We greatly appreciate your feedback.

Update 4/15/09:
This is great! The results are very encouraging. Along with the votes, we also got an excellent suggestion about using a golden starburst to house the ISO Certification emblem (gold stands out on the blue) and placing it next to the main image. Everyone here loved the new emblem and I’m presenting the new cover here as Cover C.