Director General of RSB presenting ISO 9001 Certificate to the media
Today, February 3rd, 2017, Rwanda Standards Board (RSB) held Press Conference to brief the media on international certification against ISO 9001-Quality Management System (QMS) acquired in late December 2016.

The international certification was acquired from Deutsche GesellschaftzurZertifizierung von Management systemen (DQS), a trusted certification and assessment partner for quality focused companies around the world with a record of more than 1,200,000 companies certified against ISO 9001.

At the international and regional levels, three separate but interdependent and interlinked main pillars of knowledge are essential for developing a National Quality Infrastructure (NQI) that enables sustainable development that can lead to full participation in international trade and satisfy the technical requirements of the multilateral trading system. These are standardization (capabilities to develop, publish and disseminate standards to interested parties), Metrology (access to physical, chemical, biological standards of measurements and provision of calibration and legal metrology services), and Conformity Assessment (inspection, testing and certification).

The certification acquired is a third party attestation and international recognition that services offered by RSB, namely developing standards and disseminating information on them, providing conformity assessment (testing and certification), calibration and verification (Metrology) services to enhance the competiveness of Rwandan products, fair trade and consumer protection through marketing of products and services that comply with quality and safety standards, comply with the requirement of ISO 9001.

ISO 9001 is an internationally recognized Quality Management standard, which was published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). It provides guidelines on how to develop, implement, and manage a quality system.
Its purpose is to facilitate and enable consistency of services and products by ensuring that customer requirements are met.

Most of organizations acquire ISO 9001 with the target to access new businesses.  However, once on the pathway, they quickly find benefits in terms of improved internal processes, more consistent delivery, and finally observe reduction of loss in rework once they successfully implemented it.

Speaking about that achievement, emphasized Mr. Raymond Murenzi, Director General of Rwanda Standards Board stated that: “For a number of years now, Rwanda has started a new era to build quality service- driven economy. This endeavor has called to instigating the culture of customer care and quality service in all lines of either public or private businesses. Service delivery campaigns, including the notorious “NaYombi” by the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), have been launched. Organizations are doing their best to meet customer expectations by providing timely response, and collecting customer feedback for service improvement. In all ways, customer satisfaction has become a major requirement.

With its vision to be a trusted party in providing internationally recognized and customer- suited standardization services, RSB plays significant role in standards setting at regional and international level, and in turn offers ISO 9001 certification too. It strives for international recognition through accreditation and certification of the services it delivers. This ISO 9001 certification will positively affect trade of our locally made commodities through the recognition of RSB standardization, metrology and conformity assessment related services worldwide, thus adding value to our customers’ products and services.”

Benefits of implementing ISO 9001 requirements are enormous. An organization that implements that standard gains improved productivity and efficiency, competitive advantage and increased marketing and sales opportunities. Also, cost reductions are adhered to through minimization of waste and rework, improved consistency of product and service performance through the control of  internal processes, improved communications, morale and job satisfaction within the organization and with customers, higher customer satisfaction levels, as well as improved customer perception. Entities implementing ISO 9001 requirements maximize the benefits through acquiring Certification of their system. Rwanda Standards Board offers its customers ISO 9001 certification, amongst other system and product certification services.

Rwanda is reported to be among the countries aiming at fast economic transformation and development; and no one can talk about development while leaving behind standards. Standards are benchmarks for quality and safety. It is due time for Rwanda private and public sector organizations to consider implementation of ISO 9001 and apply certification against that standard from RSB to improve their customer service, maximize their business profitability, sustainability and gain a competitive edge in the market.