Customer’s requirements review – the ISO 9001 Standard requirements – Part 1
“Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed”. (B. Franklin – sic)
Our business existence is solely for our customers. We must remember that and memorize it every morning when we step in our offices, our factories or any other business establishments. Why? Because when our customers would stop being our customers, and their money would flow to our competitors… do I really have to go on? It is important to clarify this point because the product realization starts with understanding our customers and their needs. The ISO 9001 standard requires that we understand the customers’ requirements. In order to reach that we must obtain a method for understanding our customers’ requirements. And of course you must document it all in order to verify that you are actually performing and not just saying you would.
REVIEW OF CUSTOMER’S REQUIEMENTS
The Review of requirements process in simple words includes:
- Accepting a request for a price quote from the customer
- Understanding the customer’s needs
- Reviewing how the organization may fill the requirements
- Delivering an offer
- Accepting approval for the same offer or accepting an order based on that offer
Note: just to make things clear – an offer is a document where you propose your product or service to a customer and he must approve it. I accept that in various organizations it will be called with different terms but for this article we will stick to this one – price quote. By the way, a menu in a restaurant is a price quote. Very much inflexible (depends on the chef). Your Quality management system must obtain all of the above (relax; most of you are already there without being aware…). If you would follow the requirements I assure you that some of you would comment:
- “How couldn’t I have thought of it myself?”
- “It could have saved us a lot of headaches”
- “If we had done this before we wouldn’t have been ashamed in front of our customers”
(These are all from our short lifetime experience)
ACCEPTING A REQUEST FOR A PRICE QUOT
This process is the very beginning of our relationship with our customers. The customer is actually saying: “Please perform the job for me and I will pay you, only if you would deliver my requirements”.
First of all, you should define who is responsible for receiving this request and how (by mail, fax, a phone call, etc). Don’t get complicated. The sales secretary is enough. At the same time you should also define which information would be gathered and where to record this information (on a form, an excel file or on your ERP system). At this stage the ISO 9001 Standard does not require documentation. We recommend it. It will provide you with valuable information. Especially for follow ups and statistical analysis. The ISO 9001 Standard does not require at this stage to gather information about your customers either. We recommend it. We recommend managing the requests by status as well (just that you would know where you stand).
Continue Reading the second part of the article
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