Quality Control and the ISO 9001 Accreditation
Having an ISO 9001 accreditation is not compulsory; the company can still follow the ISO's guidelines without incurring the additional costs associated with getting certified. Of course actually being certified means that the company is unlikely to fall into complacency since there are partial audits every six months with a full reassessment every three years. However, most important to a company’s successful future is consumer belief in the quality of the product. Having spent years and a lot of money building up a good reputation for quality, a company should strive to maintain the faith of the buying public.
If a company promotes is product as being cutting edge or top of the range, it should ensure that the components it out-sources meets that criteria. The best way to do this is to only use reputable companies that produce a consistently reliable product. Once the company has reliable components, it should ensure that its own processes are the best they can be. The company should also keep an eye to the future, by learning all it can about the latest production methods, up-coming trends in designs and, if possible have their own dedicated research and development department. The market leaders tend to be the ones with the most innovative products.
In the event of mass product failure, the company should be quick to react, if it is a failure that has the potential to cause harm or damage, the company should announce a product recall; most often this will be one or several batches, so the company should know which serial number range to recall. This will be much less expensive than any law suits that would be filed should anybody be hurt. If the failure is simply one of the products not working then they should offer to replace them without quibble. This is simply pre-empting a rash of guarantee claims.
Honour you guarantee, although there will be cases where people have caused the damage themselves, either by misuse or carelessness. In genuine cases the company should respond quickly and positively. There are many, many reports and complaints of people being fobbed off, although this mainly tends to be retailers telling customers that they have to deal with the manufacturer directly (not true, the customers contract is with the retailer).
If you can establish and hold on the trust of your customers, your company is likely to have a long and prosperous future. People are drawn to branded goods and as long as they believe that they are getting a good and fair deal, they are likely to stick to the manufacturers they know. This means more to the man or woman on the street than an ISO 9001 accreditation. Brands that become known for their shoddy product or indifferent customer care will soon find themselves in danger of liquidation.