ISO9001 and service organisations

Service industries often have a  tough time apply­ing the ISO standard to their activities. The Nonconforming product control requirement is an example . I have applied the Qualidoc procedure successfully for telephone service distributors, voice and data communication for a large pharmaceutical company and a research laboratory,

I have also worked with many marine companies, for example marine freight forwarding. They move paper or electronic documents round offices to move ships around the world; move pulp and paper from rail cars through warehouses on to ships.

For the marine freight forwarding company preparing for 1SO9001 registration I treated the docu­mentation as the product.  The process began with a Freight Engage­ment (the Contract) and ended with a Bill of Lading (verification for delivery).

I made sure the process worked smoothly and communication was watertight between all interested parties. I treated the nonconforming product re­quirement of ISO as nonconforming conditions, applying the nonconforming product/corrective action section of the stand­ard to the errors in the documentation itself and the processes through which it travelled,

The Certification Body’s assessor accepted this application of the standard and recommended certification. This procedure works well even though many of the documents are part of an automated flow. As long as the original quality system is thorough an automated system can be chosen and used more effectively.