MMI took a step forward toward greater customer satisfaction by having its management procedures and skills rewarded with an upgrade in the ISO 9000 series of international standards for quality management last year.
The process to achieve ISO 9001:2000 was successfully completed at the company's Jebel Ali facility, and the quality standard was awarded by Moody International Certification Ltd., international assessors and management systems specialists The ISO 9001:2000 designation is awarded only to those companies demonstrating a commitment to ongoing business improvement and customer satisfaction, a fact spelled out by Wayne Bamford, general manager of Moody International Certification Ltd, who officially presented the certificate.
When it won the award it was the fourth year that MMI Logistics had been independently certified as meeting the requirements of the ISO 9000 quality standard. It also figured among the very few companies in the Middle East to possess the upgrade. Bamford said the audit team had identified MMI's commitment to quality and to their customers, and Moody International are glad to approve of them as meeting the significant changes incorporated in the 2000 revision of the ISO 9000 quality standard.
Commenting on the groundbreaking win, Mike Lee, manager, MMI Logistics, explained that ISO standards were reviewed periodically in the light of technological and market developments.
"The 2000 revisions of the ISO 9000 series represent the most thorough overhaul of these standards since they were first published in 1987, and the new version takes into account developments in the field of quality and experience in implementing ISO 9000," he said at the award ceremony.
Among the changes made in ISO 9000 are a reduction in the number of standards, explicit requirements for achieving customer satisfaction, continual improvement; a more logical structure and an approach based on managing organisational processes. ISO 9001:2000 focuses primarily on management responsibility, resource management, process management, measurement, analysis and improvement.
The series is based on eight universal quality management principles, which are intended for use by senior management as a framework to guide organisations toward improved performance. These eight principles extend the possibility of going beyond certification to achieving satisfaction not just of customers, but of others such as employees, shareholders and the community at large.
"MMI is committed to continuous quality improvement and professional management practices," said Lee.
"We believe in the process focus of ISO and support the greater emphasis on measurement of customer satisfaction. This compliance greatly benefits our customers as well as our employees by focusing on issue resolution, ongoing process improvements and employee participation.
"This is yet another example of MMI's commitment to business excellence principles and we continue to set the highest standards in every business we operate in. Our drive covers total business management processes incorporating environment awareness management systems and operational health and safety safeguards."
The ISO 9000 is among the most widely known and successful of the standards published by ISO since it began operations in 1947. The standards have become an international reference for quality requirements in business-to-business dealings and form the basis of more than 350,000 certified quality management systems within private and public sector organisations in at least 150 countries.
