Hi I am collecting all the reasons for obtaining ISO 9001 accreditation. I am especially interested in the cost benefits of having the accreditation. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Firstly, as an aside, accreditation goes to an auditor, a quality system gets certified or a certification.
Here is my response to the question.
If I may go beyond
cost benefits to include all financial benefits then:
1. The certification
on its own will have some limited financial benefits, mainly for marketing and
sales:
a. Your company
brand is enhanced.
b. Some companies
will not source from suppliers who do not have ISO certification.
c. Many potential
customers will prefer an ISO certified company over one that is not
certified.
2. The real benefit
to your company is not in the certification itself but, if done rightly and for
the right motivation, in the improvement to the quality of your company
processes, resulting in the improvement to the quality of your final product or
service and enhanced customer satisfaction. Here is the real cost benefit: a
reduction in your cost of failure. It is generally accepted that the later a
failure or defect is detected, the more expensive it is to correct. A good,
effectively implemented quality management system (QMS) will help reduce your
cost of failure by reducing the occurrence of defective work and helping you
find any defective work before it gets to the client. A QMS built on ISO 9001
principles has a built in feed-back mechanism for continuous improvement; you
should see your cost of failure reduce over time.
3. This, however,
comes at a cost: the cost of prevention (implementing and executing on your
QMS) and the cost of appraisal (quality records and audits). It may well be
that these costs initially exceed the offset from the reduced cost of failure,
but you should definitely get a return on investment over time if you ensure
that you put in a good, effective QMS and do not merely go for ISO
certification for its own sake.
