ISO 9001 Purchasing requirements
The ISO 9001 Standard requires that our purchasing would be under control. There’s is a perfect explanation… The control required should apply only on materials or services that are related to your product. For example, when organization purchases coffee periodically, unless it is a coffee related organization, and uses the coffee to realize their product, it doesn’t have to be included under the purchasing control. The purchase control shall include only what is relevant to the realization processes.
The control over the purchasing ensures the organization that suppliers supply according to prior requirements. You would like your product to be a quality product; therefore you implement a quality management system. But the quality management system is implemented in your organization and not within the supplier’s organization or courts. The purchasing control puts the supplier’s goods under your quality management system.
Your product is under the quality management system. You assemble it, perform a quality control over the realization processes, and pack it in a beautiful controlled packet, in a well controlled process. All is well and according to the ISO 9001 Standard requirements. But what about the raw material, or the components, or services that all together assemble your product. If those are not according to your requirements or your customers’ requirements, than your whole product is at risk of losing its competence with the requirements.
The same story applies to services as well. When your purchase a service that has an effect on your product – it means that this service is a part of your product. Therefore it should be under control as well as other processes participating within the product’s realization.
Raw material – Any raw material that is purchased and the organization uses it to realize the product.
Components – Any components purchased the organization uses to realize its product.
Working tools – Any tools that are being used in order to realize the product must be under the purchasing control. You use the tools to provide the product, therefore they deserve a control.
Devices and facilities – Any machine, or facility that the organization purchases and uses to realize the product; must be under the purchasing control.
Services – Any service that the organization purchased in order to realize the product must be included under the purchasing control. If you are a kitchen cupboards factory and you use contractors to install the kitchens in customers’ houses – the installation process must be controlled as a purchased service.
Control services – Any service that the organization uses to control its processes must also be under the purchasing control. For instance, calibration services. The calibrating organization provides you a service (and very important one) and must be under control. Another good example is laboratories services. If you are a food factory (we hope that) you send samples to a (we hope a certified) laboratory to inspect the sample. That is a service related directly to your product’s realization. Therefore, it must be under control.
Maintenance services – If you acquire someone to perform maintenance service to facilities that are related to the product realization, these services must be under the purchasing control. If your organization orders maintenance to its machines, the service becomes a part of the realization process and therefore must be included under the QMS control.
Training services – Trainings are part of the product (and very important one – you may review this article to understand why). When you acquire trainings services – you acquire a service with a direct effect on your product. Therefore it must be included as well.
Let’s take an example of service that must not be included under the purchasing control; Presume there is a food factory that uses a computer network. Nothing is special. The factory acquires a data backup service and a computer networking services. These services are irrelevant to the realization processes and therefore must not be included under the purchasing control.
ISO 9001 Purchasing Requirements – Where to focus and targets your efforts?
In order to focus only on the purchasing that is relevant to your product it is recommended to perform some analyzing. Try to divide your realization process into sub processes and for every sub process see if there is any purchase activity involved or if there is any purchased goods involved.
ISO 9001 Purchasing Requirements – Documentation Requirements
The ISO 9001 Standard requires that the purchasing evaluation would be documented. That means that you have to document the evaluation itself but you are not required to document the process; you are not required to maintain a procedure. These evaluation records must be kept as quality records. They should be defined as your quality records within your records control procedure. You may want to review the next solution for suppliers’ evaluation forms: QualityManualTemplates.com. For more information about quality record you may review this article about the records control.
ISO 9001 Purchasing Requirements – Summary
- The ISO 9001 Standard requires that our purchasing would be under control.
- The control required should apply only on materials or services that are related to your product only. Only what the organization purchases and uses after that to realize the product, should be included under the purchase control.
- The control over the purchase ensures the organization that suppliers supply according to prior requirements.
- Purchasing control should apply to services as well.
- In order to focus only on the purchasing that is relevant to your product it is recommended to analyze the realization process and examine in which processes a purchasing is involved.
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