In business, it is better to leave nothing to chance. A great way to be in control is through risk management, a process in which businesses identify, assess and deal with risks that could potentially disturb their business operations.
Certainly, risk management is an important aspect of the ISO 9001:2015 standard and it is addressed through its risk-based thinking focus built into the whole management system. To understand how risk management is systematically approached in ISO 9001:2015, it is important to delve into the following clauses of the standard.
Clause 4 – Context of the organization
We see how risk management is addressed in ISO 9001:201 as early as in clause 4. This process is designated for companies to define and determine what risks are involved within the context of their own scope of work. Risks should be considered both quantitatively as well as qualitatively.
Clause 5 – Leadership
The ISO 9001 standard emphasizes the importance of leadership from top management and how crucial their involvement is in ensuring that risks that can affect the conformity of a product or service are determined and dealt with.
Clause 6 – Planning
What’s risk management without planning? Here, the organization needs to plan how they will take action to identify risks and opportunities and how they will address them.
Clause 8 – Operation
Naturally, all planning should be followed by actions. ISO 9001:2015 determines that organizations should implement and control their processes to address risks.
Clause 9 – Performance evaluation
The organization has planned and implemented actions, now it’s the time to evaluate them. ISO 9001:2015 requires organizations to monitor, measure, and evaluate risks.
Clause 10 – Improvement
One of the goals of practicing risk management in your business is, of course, to improve. This clause requires companies to respond to changes in risk and achieve improvement.
To learn more about how risk is addressed in ISO 9001:2015, or to get more information on ISO 9001 certification, write to us at contact@qms-certification.com.
