ISO (International Organization for Standardization) as the name implies it’s an independent international organisation, develops International Standards, such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, but they are not involved in the ISO certification and do not issue ISO certificates. External certification bodies in India perform the ISO certification process.In this article we will look at ISO Certification process in detail.
The aim of getting ISO certification is to advance the improvement of standardisation in the technology of an organisation.
Fee for ISO certification in India varies from organisation to organisation. The ISO certification body will compute the fee for ISO certification by considering the below mentioned different parameters:
ISO certification processing time also varies from organisation to organisation. The ISO certification body will notify the details processing time for completion of ISO certification after assessing the size of an organisation.
The precondition for processing ISO certification or ISO registration is explained in detail below:
First of all, the entrepreneur needs to choose the type of ISO certification required for the business. There are various types of ISO certification are available such as listed below:
As stated above ISO does not provide companies’ certification. It needs to be done by the external certification bodies. Thus it is mandatory to recognise the credible certification body. When selecting a certification body, the entrepreneur has to follow the things listed below.
Note: Accreditation is not compulsory; however, the companies should meet the ISO accreditation bodies’ requirements.
To find an accredited certification body in our country, contact the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), India.
The process for obtaining ISO certification in India is explained in detail below:
Once the entrepreneur or application has selected the ISO standard and ISO certification body, need to make an application in a prescribed form (depends on the ISO registrar). The application should contain rights and obligations of entrepreneur and certification body parties and includes liability issues, confidentiality, and access rights.
The ISO certification body will review all the quality manuals and documents related to various policies and procedures being followed in the organisation. Review of existing works will help the ISO registrar to identify the possible gaps against the requirements stipulated in the ISO standards.
The Pre-assessment is an initial review of the Quality Management System in an organisation to identify any significant weakness or omissions in the system and registrar will provide the organisation with an opportunity to correct the deficiencies before the regular registration assessment is conducted.
After the ISO registrar notified the existing gaps in the organisation, the applicant or entrepreneur has to prepare an action plan to eliminate these gaps. The action plan should contain the list of the required tasks to be performed to meet the Quality Management System
Note: The entrepreneur may need giving training to employees to work efficiently to achieve quality management system. Make all the employees in the organisation to aware of the ISO standards concerning work efficiency and quality standards.
The ISO registrar will conduct a physical onsite inspection to audit the changes made in the organisation.
During the audit, if the registrar finds anything that does not meet with the requirements of the ISO standards, registrar determines the severity and issue findings. Audit findings are usually called as nonconformities and fall into one of two categories depending on severity.
The registration cannot proceed until all significant nonconformities are closed and verified by the Registrar. This usually involves a re-audit of the affected areas and, of course, the associated costs.
Note: Minor nonconformities require a corrective action plan and that will be closed at the first surveillance.
After all, non-conformities are addressed, and all the findings are updated in the ISO audit report, the registrar will grant the ISO certification.
Surveillance audit will be conducted primarily to ensure that the organisation is maintaining ISO quality standards. It will be performed from time to time.