June saw Milco successfully certified with ISO 9001:2000. ISO, which stands for International Standard Organization, is a Quality Management System originally created as a 'purchasing standard' for the UK Ministry of Defense. It has since evolved into a standard designed to assist organizations in achieving 'quality' whilst helping to assure customers that such quality is achieved.
ISO's concern with Quality Management helps ensure that Milco works to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting customer and regulatory requirements and allowing them to continually improve performance. It is important to note that ISO is not a product standard; rather, it addresses issues such as sales, design, purchasing, training, calibration of measuring equipment, management, audits and control of records. The ISO 9001:2000 is based around the principles of customer satisfaction, continual improvement and the development of a process based quality management system. ISO 9001:2000 has been written to ensure that its guiding principles are equally relevant to all sectors of industry and to all types of organizations, from dairy product manufacturers to schools.
ISO is a quality management certification system mandatory for suppliers in many countries. It standardizes, organizes and controls operations, providing consistent dissemination of information. "Milco has benefited greatly since the ISO certification," admits Khalil Traboulsi, General Manager at National Food Products Company. "It has enhanced customer responsiveness to Milco products and provided a platform for continuous improvement, as well as helped us attain a higher level of perceived quality." Traboulsi also affirmed that ISO 9001:2000 helped improve time management and teamwork and resulted in an increase in operational plant efficiency as well as better documentation.
In order to be certified against the standard, Milco successfully demonstrated that they have addressed and fulfilled the requirements in each of the following sections: quality management system, management responsibility, resource management, product realization, and measurement analysis and improvement.
The Milco Macro Process Map, on which the ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System is based, forms the basis for careful analysis of the value chain. The main objective of this value chain analysis is to achieve sustained, profitable growth by providing high quality products to enhance customer satisfaction by meeting their requirements.
ISO 9001:2000 is one of the many certifications provided by the NQA. NQA (National Quality Assurance Limited) was established in 1988 and is one of the world's leading certification bodies, with around 15,000 certificates of registration in 52 countries. "ISO 9001:2000 is widely acclaimed as being the pre-eminent specification for quality management systems," assured Amanda Lawes, Quality Assurance Manager at National Food Products Company, which holds Milco among its many companies/divisions. "It requires a company to look at itself and ask the question, 'how can we improve?' We believe that an ISO 9001:2000 management system should be an essential part of any business process, requiring continual improvement by self-evaluation with a goal of ensuring that customer expectations are met and exceeded," she asserted.
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For more information please contact:
Rana Gemayel
Third Eye PR
Tel: 971 4 282 0347
Fax: 971 4 282 0062
Mob: 971 50 4596911
E-mail: Rana.gemayel@gmail.com
© Press Release 2005
