Once the ISO 9001 certification has been obtained, the company will be certified for three years, although once a year it will have to renew its certification by passing a surveillance audit which will have the task of demonstrating that the organization is maintaining its quality management system in line with the requirements contained in the standard and that it continues to comply with the ISO standard according to which it was certified (in our specific case, ISO 9001).
The management system, therefore, will be active as long as the certificate is valid. The purpose of periodically sending an auditor to the company to determine whether the management system really works is to verify that in the three years of validity of the certificate the organization continues to work as expected and as has been certified by the third party that issued the certification.
One of the central principles of the ISO methodology, in fact, is the miglioramento continuo and that is why one of the ways to verify that companies adhere to the ISO standards provided for by the certification is precisely through the annual surveillance audits. Let's see, then, how the surveillance audit works.
This verification is designed to ascertain that your organization adheres to the processi stabiliti nel Sistema di gestione della Qualità and maintains compliance with all regulatory requirements. If your ISO 9001 certificate was issued by ACSQ, we will contact you when it is almost time to carry out your annual verification, which will be carried out trying to keep costs as low as possible and minimizing the need for long on-site visits. Your certification will be renewed upon receipt of a compliant audit report from our experts.
The auditor's objective will be to determine if the company's management system works optimally on a daily basis.
But what is the difference between a certification audit and a surveillance audit? In the first one, the auditors of the certification body will examine the implementation of each process within your quality system to verify compliance with the ISO 9001 standard, as well as your company documentation, the effectiveness of the processes and the application of the concept of continuous improvement.
This tipologia di audit richiese diversi professionisti and is completed in several days, depending on the size of the company and the number of processes within the management system. The surveillance audit, on the other hand, will require less time because it will only be carried out on some parts of the quality system processes and not on the entire system.
In this case, in fact, the objective of the certification body is to verify all the processes and company sites (if there are more than one) at least once within the two-year surveillance cycle (at the end of the third, in fact, there is the recertification). To help you prepare for the annual ISO 9001 surveillance audit, we remind you that our auditor, when conducting the surveillance audit, will examine the key processes of the organization's quality management system.
So here is a small example (not exhaustive) of what we will examine when we conduct a third-party audit at your facility:
- Does the organization follow and maintain the quality system?
- Does the organization have an effective process for managing internal audits?
- Are the recommendations of these internal audits implemented?
- Have appropriate actions been taken to prevent/correct any non-conformities?
- Does the organization retain all the documentation provided for in its latest update?
- What are the customer satisfaction rates?
- Are management reviews carried out regularly?
The auditor, of course, may also focus on any minor non-conformities, on areas of interest identified in the certification audit or during previous surveillance audits. Each minor non-conformity, in fact, shows a weak point of the quality management system which could, potentially, lead to a serious error in the system.
Major non-conformities, on the other hand, indicate the presence of a significant error in the quality management system that could prevent the organization from achieving its objectives and providing its customers with products and services according to the usual quality. Each surveillance audit helps the company to prepare for the recertification audit, which takes place at the end of each three-year cycle from the date of the first certification.
Do you want to certify with ACSQ and have us as a partner for your annual surveillance visit? Call us without obligation on 02.58320936 or write to us at