São Paulo – The Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce obtained, at the end of last month, the latest version of the ISO 9001 compliance certificate, which is from 2015. It was awarded after an external audit conducted on October 19 and 20 and means that the organization complies to the most modern requirements within this quality management system. The Arab Chamber earned the ISO 9001 in 2000, but interested in maintaining quality standards, sought the 2015 version.
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“We upgraded to the 2015 version, showing that we offer an increasingly better service. The Arab Chamber is always seeking an improvement in services quality,” says the CEO of the Arab Chamber, Michel Alaby.
To obtain the ISO 9001: 2015, the companies and organizations need to fulfill some requirements. For instance, a greater engagement of senior management with the management system, and a mindset based in risks incorporated to the requirements, that is, the risks of the quality management processes should be assessed in the company.
The ISO 9001:2015 also requires the company to place the emphasis on the needs of the interested parts, that is, to not focus only in the clients, but in other involved parts, such as employees, suppliers, community, among others, according to information provided by the coordinator of Processes Management of the Arab Chamber, Flaviane Forti Chitero.
Other requirements assessed are if the quality management is integrated and aligned with the organization’s strategic orientation, if there’s focus on management and performance improvement, and if there’s a more flexible approach for the documented information, which means a flexibility in the documentation of the internal processes.
The acronym ISO means International Organization for Standardization, which is a standards and norms organization founded in Switzerland in 1947. The organization created groups of norms that are used as models for quality management and one of them is the ISO 9001. This specific ISO was created in the industrial sector so that companies from a certain country could trade with others with the guarantee that all those involved were focusing on quality.
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However, since it was created, ISO 9001 is always being update to modern versions, with better results. The 1987 version, for instance, focused on quality management, and the 1994 version include the concept of prevention, and the 2000 version focused more on services companies, and the 2008 version was more compatible with other management systems. ISO has other management systems, such as the 14001, which focus on the environment.
Before the ISO 9001:2015, the Arab Chamber had the 2008 version, which was the most recent before the 2015. The upgrade to the new version resulted in the optimization of processes, improvement of the organization and more involvement by senior management, according to Chitero. In an interview to ANBA, the Arab Chamber’s president, Rubens Hannun, congratulated the staff for the initiative of upgrading and achieving the new version of the ISO 9001.
Since the system was adopted, it has been helping the organization to retain its knowledge, register the description of its processes so that they can have continuity regardless of staff changes. According to Alaby, the great chambers of commerce in Brazil and many other Arab Chambers have the ISO compliance certificate.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
