Nestle: Global Quality Management

The international recognition is an important reason why Nestle is ISO 9001:2015 certified. In any organization quality is regarded as a high priority and its importance has gained recognition in many places around the world. Especially within the food and nutrition industry, quality is an essential criteria for the sale of goods. Moreover, it brings both short term and long term benefits to the company by driving a competitive edge and increasing operational efficiency. More importantly, ISO certification is becoming a mandatory certification in many companies today as it is a universal standard that can be adopted for any line of work even though it was mainly designed for manufacturing and service based industries. Nestle is a global organization

Most customers and suppliers will only do business with companies that are compliant with this standard. Of course Nestle is also well into the Continuous Improvement Lean journey as well and goes above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction in the long run as well. Nestle understands that customer satisfaction is the main goal of a quality management system because of which we are able to reap the long term benefits of being in business with our customers and suppliers. By being ISO 9001 certified, we are not only aiming to meet the customer’s stated requirements but also their implied requirements which leads to fewer complaints and being better equipped with the tools to resolve them. One of the ways we guarantee customer satisfaction is by knowing our NQMS is working properly because our customer expects such high quality and we must provide

One of the challenges when it comes to implementation of ISO 9001 is the organizational and procedural change that comes with it. One of the main purposes of ISO 9001 is traceability of process improvement which requires a lot of documentation. By putting a requirement in place that all processes and procedures need to be documented, it enhances control of the management system but may also require employees to invest additional time and effort in their ways of working. There is also a misconception that implementing ISO certification will require a lot of financial resources however if some of the employees can be trained in internal auditing, it will cut the costs of certification significantly. Another barrier to implementation is the lack of top level management support either because it may not be of prime importance to them or because of high turnover. Even after its implementation, top management needs to be convinced that being ISO 9001 certified will allow the organization to provide a clear commitment of quality to its customers. It is important to note that the certification does not necessarily guarantee quality products but will help in ensuring continuous improvement in the processes that may result in high quality products. Employee resistance is another barrier primarily due to the change of mindset in having to do more administrative work or train in performing internal audits.