GAP Analysis: It is an initial assessment to determine how much the organization's processes are in sync with the ISO standard requirements to estimate the time and cost involved.
Project Planning: Management is key player in this part since all business objectives, products and services need to be identified so that processes are put in places which are not just beneficial to the internal system but in turn improves operations, reduces cost, increases and sustains quality of product and service.
Documentation: The important documents for ISO are Quality Manual, Control of document, Quality Records, System level processes, procedures and Instructions.
Implementation: This stage goes hand in hand with the quality manual, every document, process, instruction. This is the most critical stage since it provides functionality and essence to the ISO system. Say what you do and do what you say is best implemented here.
Reassessment: Internal audit is carried out to follow the whole process and check if all the stages are tied together. All the processes, procedure documentations, work instructions should be able to backup and referenced to ISO requirement. External auditor (registrar) does audit in 2 stages. Stage 1 is to conduct a pre-assessment to check if all processes are in place and suggest recommendations and stage 2 is after few weeks to few months (some registrars prefer that QMS system is functioning fine before actual audit)
Getting & Maintaining Certification: Surveillance of the system at this stage will get the certification if all corrective and preventive actions as well as continuous improvement initiatives are incorporated. Registrars carry out annual checks to ensure the efficacy of QMS.
Frequent internal audits and records: Quarterly Audits reduce the added burden on maintaining a functional system. Any deviation can be caught and identified before it becomes system wide problem.
