Editors welcome and introduction
In today’s challenging economic environment businesses are paying even greater attention to managing risks and improving performance. A management system allows your organization to manage risks, whether that is the risk of not delivering what the customer wants, a security breach or the risk of harming people or the environment. An effective management system provides an agile and systematic approach to measuring and improving performance that will continually contribute to the bottom line by increasing customer satisfaction and reducing cost through improvement.
Investing in third-party certification provides your organization and its customers, consumers, and regulators with confidence. Confidence that
you have a system that will not only deliver what stakeholders want now, but that can also sustain and even improve that level of performance.
Given the confidence in sustainable performance that certifi cation provides, it is no surprise that the CQI promotes the appropriate use of accredited third-party certification.
This QW Guide to Certification provides you with a practical insight into what certification might mean for your business, how to choose a certification body and what the future might bring for certification.
It cannot be denied that the world of certification is currently faced with a range of challenges as the needs of business change to demand ever more flexible systems and the global economy exposes variability in the levels of accredited certifi cation. In parallel, standards, such as the ISO 9000 series, in common with all ISO standards, are developed by committees and their content arrived at by consensus. While this ensures that everyone’s views are heard, some might argue that important points may be diluted as a result.
Nevertheless, in tough economic times certification could be the key to making business better by opening new markets where certification is a must, and by providing that extra confidence that your system is agile enough to keep up with changing customer requirements and the need to operate ever more efficiently.
HELEN STOKES Editor