ISO 9001 is a Quality Management system standard which helps organizations to deliver consistent quality of products/services. ISO 9001 follows a process approach towards Quality Management standard. ISO 9001 is published by International Organization for Standardization. The latest version of ISO 9001 is ISO 9001:2015. ISO 9001 prescribes the requirements for the Quality Management system of organizations. When complied with these requirements, organizations are certified to ISO 9001. An external audit by accredited certification bodies verifies the compliance of the organizations to the standard’s requirements, before recommending for certification. ISO 9001 is the most popular quality management system standard which is widely across the world. Being a generic standard, ISO 9001 is applicable for all industry sectors. It is used widely both in product as well as service sectors.
The objective of quality audit is to verify the compliance of the department/organization to the defined Quality Management system and eh requirements of ISO 9001:2015. Also, it provides the assurance and confidence to the management that the processes of the organization are being complied. Another important objective is to identify and highlight the non compliances to the required levels within the organization so that they are acted upon promptly.
QMS software packages offer a readymade suite for automating the entire quality audit process, right from planning , assigning auditors, conducting, , reporting non conformances, closing non conformances and collating the audit results. Through automation and by providing standard and robust checklists, these packages go a long way in ensuring that the quality audits meet their defined objectives. Also, they ensure that the internal quality audits are conducted in such a way that they meet the requirements of the external certification audit.
Effivity is well known Quality Management system software which facilitates the QMS definition and deployment, based on ISO 9001:2015. Effivity has a powerful quality audit module built in. The Quality audit module facilitates smooth progress of the entire quality audit process. All the stakeholders involved in the quality audit process are seamlessly integrated to ensure smooth conductance of the audit. In the days of distributed operations with people operating from multiple locations across the globe, the quality audit module of Effivity ensures that quality audits are conducted without any glitch irrespective of the number of locations.
Moreover, the records of the quality audit remain intact for the external audit point of view. Also, they remain as ready reference for the entire organization from a knowledge management point of view. Effivity offers extensive data analysis capabilities in which the internal audit are sliced and diced in different dimensions and presented to meet the needs of various stakeholders of the organization. Also, the seamless automation of the entire internal audit process ensures that the defined internal audit process of the organization is automatically complied with without providing any chance for deviation or non compliance. Through end to end automation and a power dashboard, Effivity ensures that the objectives of the audit are met even during the post audit phases.