Evaluating the implementation of ISO 9001 standard to company operations : case study of a catering equipment company in South Africa

Abstract: ISO 9001 is a system that is implemented within organisations to establish a quality standard of service or products through documentation, traceability, analysis of data and control of records. ISO 9001 requirements was introduced in 1987 and since then it has changed over a number of years until the latest version was released, which is the ISO 9001:2015 standard. ISO 9001 was originally developed for the manufacturing industry but over many years it has been applied in many industries across the world. As ISO 9001 became more popular, organisations adopted the standard because it started becoming a request from customers who wanted to purchase products from certified suppliers. The organisation in which this study was conducted is currently certified for the ISO 9001:2008 Standard and seeks certification of the ISO 9001:2015 in 2017; the organisation has not started preparations for this as they intend to do this after August 2016 once they have completed their external audit. The dissertation thus will concentrate on the ISO 9001:2008 because the case study is based on an organisation that is certified to that standard. Research was conducted within an organisation to collect information in order to evaluate how effective ISO 9001 standard has been. The organisation is a manufacturer of industrial catering equipment and supplies them to franchise companies such as Debonairs and Nandos. Interviews with 24 employees, observations and statistical information were gathered to evaluate how well ISO 9001 was implemented. The research further examined how documentation compliance, human error, rework and prototypes have all affected the implementation of the ISO 9001 standard within the organisation. The research explained how people are involved when it comes to implementing the ISO 9001 Standard and how without people participation it cannot be effectively implemented. The methodology used to gain information was qualitative techniques through interviews, document review and observation. The purpose of using three methods to collect data was to improve the credibility and cover all shortcomings of each method. The key findings identified were that rework within the organisation is very low and as a result the factory does not build prototypes before manufacturing. It was found that ISO 9001...M.Tech. (Operations Management