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ISO 9001 Quality management systems

ISO 9001 is the international standard for quality management systems. It helps an organisation consistently meet customer and legal requirements and keep improving its way of working.

Explanation

The standard describes how to set up a quality management system, without prescribing what your processes must look like. Core ideas are customer focus, leadership, working with processes, risk-based thinking and continual improvement.

Organisations choose ISO 9001 to structure their work, because clients ask for it or for the trust a certificate brings. You can apply the standard without a certificate. If you want to certify, a certification body assesses your system, with periodic checks and reassessment.

In practice ISO 9001 means, among other things: setting policy and objectives, managing processes and documents, carrying out internal audits, following up non-conformities and complaints with corrective actions and having top management regularly review whether the system works. You obtain the text of the standard from the standards institute.

Example from practice

An engineering firm documents its core processes, measures customer satisfaction, carries out internal audits every year and follows up complaints with measures. An external auditor periodically assesses whether the system works.

© 2026 BrydgeOne. General information, not legal or other professional advice. No rights can be derived from this explanation.

In BrydgeOne

Where you work with ISO 9001

AuditsPlan internal audits and log findings. Document managementOne current version, with read confirmation. ProcessesMap processes and link them to the standard. ActionsFollow up corrective and preventive actions. ISO 9001Quality
Knowledge base

Keep reading

Introducing ISO 9001: how to set up a quality management systemISO 9001 is the most widely known standard for quality management. It helps you deliver consistently what customers expect and keep getting better. Here is how to set up a system that fits your organisation instead of a pile of documents. Carrying out an internal audit: step-by-step plan and checklistAn internal audit tests whether your management system does what you agreed and whether it works. With a fixed plan it becomes a source of improvement rather than a paper exercise. This article walks through the seven steps, with a checklist. Document control for your management system: versions, approval and reviewDocument control in a management system ensures that employees always work with the current, approved version. ISO 9001 speaks of documented information and mainly asks for control, not a mountain of paper. Here is how to arrange it practically. Writing a process description for ISO 9001: structure, example and common mistakesA process description records for each process its purpose, its owner, what goes in and out, the steps you take, who does what, the risks and how you measure performance, usually on one or two pages. ISO 9001 asks for a process approach, but does not prescribe a fixed format. This guide shows which processes you have, what to include and what a worked example looks like.
Glossary

See also

PDCA cyclePlan-Do-Check-Act (Deming cycle)CAPACorrective and Preventive ActionInternal auditInternal auditCertificationCertificationKAMQuality, Occupational Health & Safety and Environment

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