If you are the person responsible for selecting suppliers or making purchasing decisions in your organization then help is at hand. The International Standards Organization ISO have released a document to help explain the different ways that suppliers can demonstrate their ISO 9001:2008 conformity. It also discusses what you can potentially do if things go wrong and you are dissatisfied with the performance of your supplier.
More than a million organizations worldwide in over 170 countries are certified to ISO 9001:2008, and many of them claim or promote that their goods and services are certified to the standard. This is infact is incorrect. You can not have your goods and services certified under ISO 9001, the reference to ISO 9001 should be to indicate that their Quality Management System QMS meets the requirements.
There are 3 main ways in which you can verify that your suppliers should be either added to or stay on your approved supplier list:
Supplier’s declaration of conformity – a declaration by your supplier itself affirming that its QMS meets ISO 9001 requirements, usually supported by legally-binding signatures. This declaration can be based on your supplier’s internal audit system, or on second party or third party audits
Second party audits – your supplier has been audited directly by its customer (for example by you, or by another customer, whose reputation you respect) to check if its QMS meets ISO 9001 requirements and your own requirements – sometimes used in contractual “ business-to-business ” transactions
Third party audits – (often referred to as certification or registration) your supplier employs an impartial third party (a certification body, or “ registrar ”) to conduct an assessment to verify conformity to ISO 9001 requirements. This third party then issues a certificate to your supplier describing the scope of its QMS, and confirming that it conforms to ISO 9001
If you are interested in reading the updated document please visit the official ISO website – http://www.iso.org/iso/home/news_index/news_archive/news.htm?refid=Ref1624
