B.E.C SYSTEM CERTIFICATION PROCESS

ISO 9001:2000

While ISO 9001:2000 remains the overall standard for quality management, there have been some changes. The most visible of these pertains to a new structuring of the ISO 9000 family. Specifically, ISO 9002 and ISO 9003 are being discontinued (all companies will use ISO 9001). The role of ISO 9004 in the series remains unchanged but it has been completely rewritten in order to align it with the new ISO 9001. And ISO 9001 itself, while still maintaining its role in the ISO 9000 family, has had some of its structure and sectional content revised.

The new quality system requirements for ISO 9001 have been organized into four main sections: Section 5-Management Responsibility; Section 6-Resource Management; Section 7-Product and/or Service Realization; and Section 8-Measurement, Analysis and Improvement. The new structure makes ISO 9001 more compatible with the ISO 14001 standard and helps de-emphasize the role of manufacturing industries was so prominent in previous editions. Most revisions in ISO 9001 are in customer-related processes and continual improvement. Other sections with major revisions are those involving training, awareness and communication as well as process control.

There are also several new miscellaneous requirements spread throughout the standard. These are often restated and expanded under several sections. For example, requirements on process control are introduced in Section 5, developed in two clauses of Section 7, then restated in Section 8. While there are sound reasons for this approach, it can make it somewhat difficult to identify and understand the requirements. Therefore, the intent of the standard can be interpreted only after related requirements are culled from different sections and analyzed together.

WHAT IS OHSAS 18001?

OHSAS stands for Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series. In April 1999, the British Standards Institute released the specification that they called OHSAS 18001. This was developed in response to strong worldwide demand for a generalized, comprehensive outline for managing occupational health & safety issues.

A descendant of BS 8800 and a number of other national and private-sector standards, OHSAS 18001 can be used by any company to promote safe work practices and employee well-being. Its format parallels ISO 9001 and 14001, and registrars are now implementing and testing uniform models for auditing and registration to OHSAS 18001.

While OHSAS 18001 has not yet reached the status of an international standard, a growing number of organizations are becoming interested in attaining registration to this voluntary scheme. They understand that this will provide them numerous benefits, including:

• Ensuring the proper and effective management of worker health & safety.
• Demonstrating to regulatory bodies the seriousness of their commitment to these issues.
• The potential to obtain lower insurance premiums by showing insurers that they are carefully managing risk.

What is HACCP?

HACCP involves seven principles:

• Analyze hazards. Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological, such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical, such as ground glass or metal fragments.
• Identify critical control points. These are points in a food's production--from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer--at which the potential hazard can be controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling, packaging, and metal detection.
• Establish preventive measures with critical limits for each control point. For a cooked food, for example, this might include setting the minimum cooking temperature and time required to ensure the elimination of any harmful microbes.
• Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points. Such procedures might include determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature should be monitored.
• Establish corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met--for example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.
• Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly--for example, testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a cooking unit is working properly.
• Establish effective recordkeeping to document the HACCP system. This would include records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems. Each of these principles must be backed by sound scientific knowledge: for example, published microbiological studies on time and temperature factors for controlling foodborne pathogens.