ISO 9001:2000 Implementation in Business

Instructions

The purpose of the Learner’s Log Book (LLB) is to document the achievements of the learner in a central repository that will be considered as evidence on the effectiveness of the learning process. It is a ‘monitoring tool’ that e-tutors use to report on individual learners’ progress and it is a way of ensuring that learners:

• Are engaged in their learning process.
• They are experimenting by doing the tasks subscribed to them by the e-tutor.
• Avoid plagiarism because learners have to be engaged on a continuous basis and the informal assessment can therefore be used to ensure consistency with the main formal assessment.
• Provide e-Tutors with the opportunity to get to know the learners evaluate them and mentor them properly.
• There are templates which will reflect whether learners read, whether they understand, whether they assimilate the knowledge, whether they develop enquiry ability, whether they have the potential to conduct critical thinking and whether they can reflect on the knowledge accumulated by relating to real situations.

The onus is mainly on learners to furnish the required information in the templates after each unit based on the Read and Analyze Activity. After filling the information in the template they need to e-mail it back to the e-Tutor.

e-Tutor will then comments on the work done and the involvement that takes place and give overall impressions on the learners at the end of the module.

Summary

The ISO 9000 use in organizations has brought massive benefits related to quality, supplier performance, employee relations and communication, management, image and position for competitive advantage and production processes. Other advantages of enhancing quality assurance via ISO 9000 include improvement of internal operations and product reliability.The article ISO 9001:2000 implementation in the Greek food sector by Evangelos Psomas and Christos Fotopoulos is an important reading which reflects on the significance of ISO 9001:2000 in a business.

Some of the major sources of competitive advantage and viability in an organization are its ability to ensure quality of service provision and offerings of products. The realization that the financial improvements as well as overall growth in operations are based on enhancing quality has propelled many organizations to change their practices. Thus in their management agenda, these organizations have sought to create and work with strategies which aim at ensuring continuous quality improvements.

It is imperative to note that while many food industries in Greece have taken to improving quality via total quality management, ISO 9000 quality assurance standards and statistical process control the methods. Unlike other systems whereby company technicians are involved, quality assurance is undertaken by an organization’s top management.

Key Learning Points

• Certification of an organization using ISO 9000 is critical for enhancing of quality provision of products and services.
• The internal business environment requires to be improved, a factor that calls for effective implementation of quality assurance.
• ISO 9000 is a customer requirement tool and a ticket that opens the doors of a business to customers and diverse opportunities.
• By strictly following demands of ISO 9000-2000, a business does not merely seek to develop its internal and external environment to foster higher quality, it also creates careful relationship with consumers to ensure that responses and needs for advancements are carefully articulated.
• ISO 9000-2000 is particularly emphatic on capacities of products being released to the market thereby forming a pillar for better understanding of the need for greater customization of differing products and how they can be improved.

Relevant Statements to the Session

• Provision of quality products as well as services has become a major source of deriving a competitive edge by businesses and for organizations’ viability.
• The various methods that can develop and sustain quality are diverse and include total quality management (TQM), the use of IS0 9000 quality assurance standards and the statistical process control.
• ISO 9000 is an important tool which harmonizes international and national quality systems
• ISO 9001 aims at emphasizing quality in provision of products and services, a factor that has perhaps been the greatest tool that businesses use to ensure that their offerings adhere to all principles of ethics and most importantly targeted at ensuring continued quality assurance.
• ISO 9001-2000 also focuses on rekindling the importance of the process as a defining factor for the end results.
• The standard focuses on the fact that if correct procedures are followed, then the end products would definitely conform to the set standards.
• This objective has led to revamping of food businesses due to increased effort towards enhancing quality, competitive advantage and boosting customer loyalty.

Critical Analysis

International Standards development remains the greatest milestone in the consistent provision of products and services which meet the expectations and needs of consumers and also adhere to applicable regulations. Critics point out that while it is an important component that enhances standards, it lacks specific requirements on services and products to buy. This leaves consumers with the role of defining their own expectations.

This is in terms of international product standards, drawings and product specifications. Even so, ISO 9001-2000 has created a sense of quality, promoted economic progression, and most importantly, drawn the way for future development. Unlike during the industrial revolution and indeed World War I&II when standards were only applied in isolation and to one party’s advantage, ISO standards form the center for both industrial, non-industrial, services and all products production and provision on a global scale.

The era preceding ISO 9001 was a vague one because managers and organizations could easily deliver faulty products and services and get away with it. This appears to concur with other scholars who have set out to clarify the importance of ISO 9001:2000 based largely on quality management. The call by ISO 9001 has however been criticized to be lacking the emphasis and needed clarity that could easily be upheld to streamline the industry and bestow high client satisfaction at all levels.

A clarification is therefore needed to place consumers at the forefront by seeking to understand their needs well before products and services are developed and given out. In the food industries found in Greece, managers have considered looking at the new product from the notion and consideration of what the end user will derive from it as opposed to solely drawing much of the efforts to the profits that would be derived from such undertakings.

Though ISO 9001:2000 like other ISO standards is understood as a separate consideration of standards, it stems from ISO 9001 which was established in 1987. ISO 9001 had similar structures that were employed by the British Standards at that time. As such, modification is crucial if ISO 9001-2000 is to incorporate more globalized considerations of assurance in design, effective development, production process, respective installation, and even servicing.

The need for superior quality in Greece has strongly characterized consumer realms to a position whereby customers insist only on buying what reflects the value for services they require. ISO 9001 in the same line seeks to specify the high level quality management and further lever the existing assurance defined in the earlier ISO 9000 and ISO 9001-2000.

In addition, it is imperative to mention that the adoption of ISO 9001:2000 by Greek food industries aims at emphasizing on quality management systems. This has perhaps been the greatest tool that their managers use to ensure that product and service provision processes adhere to all principles of ethics. Most importantly, it is targeted at ensuring continued quality assurance. ISO 9001-2000 therefore aims at rekindling the importance of the process as a defining factor for the end results.

The standard posits that if the correct procedures are followed, then the end products would definitely conform to the set standards. This aim has seen managers revamp their efforts toward securing their management systems in eliminating fear but developing important points of cooperation with their clients.

Practical Implications

The implementation of ISO 9001:2000 in the mainstream business especially in the Greek food sector is a clear evidence of the emergence of a new culture that sees progress as a process and not a point or end product. However, as analyzed earlier, ISO 9001 can only be effective if it addresses consumer needs such as purchasing information besides quality in meeting consumer needs. I have come to realize from the earlier analysis that ISO 9001:2000 emphasizes that the only way to be fully compliant is setting out a related process that allows success to be seen with a positive focus that enables improvement at all levels.

Upon certification, an organization should become totally different and a new culture of quality ought to be adopted immediately. As Mary Jo Hatch indicated in her model of cultural dynamics, all stakeholders have intrinsic values which can be used to improve quality of the final products.

By either working in teams or as individuals, managers should ensure that new cultures in ISO 9001:2000 certified are adhered to and that their organizations strongly embrace the need for continued improvement at all instances of their production process. Managers should also note that it is better to put on hold any production process and listen to a constructive point that would make the final product better.

I have leant from the analysis of the article that emphasizing on the importance of culture in leveraging value improvement in provision of products and services is critical in bringing out aspects that remain outstanding in all related organizations.

First of all, Greek food sectors should ensure that they recruit the best practices and workforce. Besides, they should always take their products and workers through rigorous processes to identify and guarantee quality. As a culture, this scrutiny is important in that it forms the initial pool of charged workers with the capacity to see and take their imagination and creativity well beyond their organizations’ objectives. In my view, this is the only way through which an organization can enhance quality provision and compete favorably in the dynamic market.