Can Small Business get ISO 9001 Certified?

The pressure comes from industries like automotive, medical and environmental for their subcontractors to become registered. The customer to such small companies adds to the dilemma by requesting certification as a token of trust and reliability. These days it just seems like a double whammy.

A small business as understood by department of commerce is one that employs less than 500 people. That means a Machine shop to Sheet metal manufacturing all come under the umbrella of Small Business. For a relatively bigger organization it becomes easily justifiable to get certification and seems a viable option since most of the companies recover their investment in 3 years (studies from McGraw Hill and Dun & Bradstreet) but for a machine shop which does the contract and specialty work for one of these bigger companies is hard since their main product/service is that machine which they have invested in. With few resources, fewer incentives and inconsistent contracts pouring in, smaller companies have tough time justifying the cost and effort for registration.

This equipped with the common knowledge that it takes about $10,000-$25,000 approximately to get certified and retain certification in subsequent years. These figures are all dependent on the size of company, number of employees they have and number of factors but largely the size of company. Since a small company has few employees and few operations, its quality process will be a lot simpler and less expensive. The result of registration is felt more in a small company due to fact that its resources are more streamlined.

As a small company it is difficult to run business with competition coming from a lot of manufacturing gone to developing countries. This along with the financial instability, limited resources & manpower, training requirement, software upgrades makes registration an unattainable dream. Although there are a lot of obstacles in path to get registration for small organizations, there is a plethora of resource to achieve the goal. Since the limited number of resource is the biggest challenge getting external help is viable option but choosing a consultant with knowledge and understanding of your requirement is a critical step.

Just like the first step to shed the extra pounds is the most critical so is this step but once an organization is committed to follow the path all the obstacles become learning curve and all the myths debunked.