DOs and DON’Ts of ISO 900, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, HACCP ISO 22000, ISO 27001 implementation and certification and how to select a correct consultant

 

There are a lot of companies across the world who feel that ISO certification is either not working for them or is too expensive to maintain or is very difficult to maintain due to all unrealistic documentation or ISO is just about paperwork without any tangible business benefits.

 

All these companies are victim of either improper implementation process or improper and faulty  selection of a consultant for their ISO certification project. Success and resultant business benefits of any ISO standard like ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, HACCP ISO 22000, ISO 27001 etc. largely depend on proper and justified selection of the correct consulting company.

From our global experience of ISO implementation in more than 30 countries, we bring you our Dos and Don’ts for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, HACCP ISO 22000, ISO 27001 implementation and guidance on how to select an ISO consultant for effective ISO system implementation.

 

DOs

·         Document your way of doing business and align the implementation of ISO 9001:2008, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, HACCP ISO 22000, ISO 27001 ETC with your business objectives and business practices.

·         Keep the documentation simple.

·         Document the flexibility you need in your procedures.

·         Use the ISO implementation as a stepping stone to get better efficiency in your operation.

·         Choose a Management Representative that is part of the management team and well liked and respected within the organization.

·         Conduct your implementation on a faster-track approach, slow implementations are more disruptive and difficult in the long run.

·         Choose an ISO/Management representative who sees the big picture and understand ISO at a higher level.

·         Provide ISO training to the management level individuals even if you are going to use an external consultant.  

·         Provide Internal Auditor training to the Management Representative and some other key members of the organization. Select a consultant firm on the basis of how well their style will fit your company culture, as well as their success rate in helping companies achieve certification. An inappropriate consultant can do a lot of damage. Check the references!

·         Beware of the “today appear – tomorrow disappear” kind of consultants. Make sure that the consultant has a proper office and is an established legal entity. More than 90% of the so called consultants are operating from them home with a set of documentation that they have acquired from some where and do just cut-copy-paste to prepare documentation for client organizations. These kind of consultants are doing the biggest crime by fooling the organizations. These kind of so called consultants themselves don’t understand the ISO standard requirements and they try to misguide the companies by improper documentation and getting you certified from the low grade certification body that is not bothered about quality of your system implementation.

·         Make sure you use consultants with practical business experience in your field (Like Lakshy Management Consultant Pvt. Ltd. – transnational experience with unmatched expertise and proven consulting skills to deliver 100% successful and timely completion of ISO certification project). Check their references and recent certification success stories.

·         Check credit history of consulting firms… there are a lot of reputable and yet unreliable entities out there…

·         Beware of consultants that quote you a fixed cost without understanding thoroughly about  your operation. They are low-balling to get the job. Once they get it and they do get a feel of the amount of work, they will either start cutting corners to save time, which will put you at risk, or find a way to abort the implementation process in midstream after having pocketed a chunk of money.

·         Ask for detailed quotes from registrars that cover a 3-year period, which include the yearly Surveillance Audits.

·         Lock in a registration audit date right away, so that all your organization has a clear target and stays focused.

·         Choose and treat your Registrar like a long-term partner.

·         Use a Registrar’s Preliminary Assessment as an improvement tool, as well as to maintain momentum for the implementation.

·         If you feel confident that you are ready without having to go through a preliminary assessment, call for a certification audit.

DON’Ts

·         Don’t start implementation before an experienced person or a professional conducts a gap assessment to determine exactly what needs to be done. You may go off-track and waste precious time and resources implementing unnecessary items, and missing some crucial tasks.

·         Don’t select a consulting or training firm based on cost. The cheap ones will cut corners. You will end up paying for the incomplete implementation or training during AND after the registration audit.

·         Don’t create more work for yourself and your colleagues just to comply with ISO. That may mean that you are not aligning the implementation with your business practices and worst of all that the maintenance of the quality management system is going to be cumbersome and burdensome for your organization.

·         Don’t use canned documentation or wonder software: they just plainly don’t work if you want to comply with ISO and be certified by a reputable registrar.

·         Don’t conduct ISO implementation just to get a certificate.

·         Don’t over-document procedures: the more you say the more you commit to.

·         Don’t sacrifice the operational flexibility you need for your business to please the auditors.

·         Doesn’t use a consultant that you will have to depend on to maintain your quality management system after certification. It will just cost you more and imply that the implementation was incomplete.

·         Don’t use an expensive consulting firm as a guarantee of better results: they usually have large corporation background, and may impose inapplicable requirements to your businesses, or may send their trainees to work on your account.

·         Don’t document artificial or hypothetical ways of doing business to please a Registrar.

·         Don’t leave the Registration audit date TBD until you assess implementation progress.

·         Don’t get certified from the certification body suggested by the consultant blindly. Do your own check with the certification body. Speak with a few good certification bodies. Ask your consultant to give reference to you and list of clients certified from each of the certification bodies. A good consultant will not hesitate in doing so but a make-shift or inexperienced consultant will always prompt you to get the certification audit done from a couple of certification bodies only as he or she will have a close tie-up (though not legal and not allowed by ISO) with such not so famous and unethical certification bodies.

·         Don’t think a Registrar is here to fail you.

·         Don’t use an obscure Registrars who may almost give you a certificate for the right price… Their ISO certificates are worthless in the eyes of the business community.

·         Don’t think that a good auditor is necessarily good at implementation.

·         Don’t have a Preliminary Assessment conducted by a Registrar, if you do not have a well-implemented quality management system.

·         Don’t Implement SPC if it does not make sense for your process.

 

 

Contact Lakshy Management Consultant Pvt. Ltd. at info@lakshy.com or call our 24 hours customer care at +91 9821780035 to enable us assist you in your ISO implementation and certification journey and partner your process improvement initiatives.

Because we understand that when you decide to go for ISO certification, you have a dream in mind about the benefits the ISO system will bring in…WE MAKE SURE THAT THESE DREAMS ARE NOT SHATTERED AND YOU REALISE THE TRUE POTENTIAL OF THE ISO IMPLEMENTATION AND CERTIFICATION THROUGH OUR VALUE ADDED CONSULTING AND TRAINING SERVICES.