ISO 9001: Quality Management Systems (QMS)

ISO 9001 is the internationally recognized standard for Quality Management Systems (QMS). It is the most widely used QMS standard in the world, with over 1.1 million certificates issued to organizations in 178 countries.

ISO 9001 provides a framework and set of principles that ensure a common-sense approach to the management of your organization to consistently satisfy customers and other stakeholders. In simple terms, ISO 9001 certification provides the basis for effective processes and effective people to deliver an effective product or service time after time.

The standard follows the common structure provided by Annex SL ISO 9001:2015 is more compatible with other management systems, such as ISO 14001, making it more effective and efficient to integrate management systems.

What is ISO 14001?

ISO 14001 is the international standard for environmental management systems (EMS) and the most widely used EMS in the world, with over 14,000 organizations certified in the UK and over 250,000 certificates issued globally.

ISO 14001 is the principal management system standard which specifies the requirements for the formulation and maintenance of an EMS. This helps to control your environmental aspects, reduce impacts and ensure legal compliance.

ISO 14001 is accompanied by ISO 14004 Environmental Management Systems – General Guidelines on principles, systems and support techniques. The standard covers issues such as the establishment, implementation, maintenance and improvement of an EMS.

What is ISO 45001?

To help protect employees and visitors from work-related accidents and diseases, the International Organization for Standardization introduced the ISO 45001 standard, which represents the world’s first international standard for occupational health and safety — or OH&S.

Sadly, thousands of workers lose their lives each day to preventable instances of adverse workplace conditions. In fact, according to the ISO and International Labour Organization — or ILO — the total number of workers who die every day from accidents and work-related diseases exceeds 7,600, which adds up to more than 2.7 million lives lost every year across the globe.

ISO 45001 certification was developed to mitigate any factors that can cause employees and businesses irreparable harm. Its standards are the result of great effort by a committee of health and safety management experts who looked closely at a number of other approaches to system management — including ISO 9001 and ISO 14001. In addition, ISO 45001 was designed to take other existing occupational health and safety standards, such as OHSAS 18001, into account — as well as the ILO’s labor standards, conventions and safety guidelines.

According to many health and safety experts — including the professionals who worked on the ISO committee — ISO 45001 represents a landmark breakthrough. For the first time internationally, businesses of all sizes can now access a single framework that offers them a clear pathway to developing better and more robust occupational health and safety measures.

Especially geared toward senior management, ISO 45001 has the ultimate goal of helping businesses provide a healthy and safe working environment for their employees and everyone else who visits the workplace. This goal can be achieved by controlling factors that could potentially lead to injury, illness and — in extreme situations — even death. As a result, ISO 45001 is concerned with mitigating any factors that are harmful or that pose a danger to workers’ physical and/or mental well-being.

Although ISO 45001 is heavily informed by OHSAS 18001, it’s a distinctly new standard — not a simple revision or brief update. Read on to see what organizations of all types and sizes need to do to maintain compliance and achieve ISO 45001 certification.

What is ISO 27001?