Setup to acquire a Quality Management System (QMS) for your company is mandatory. we would like to share how our company implemented QMS for the first time. The American Petroleum Institute (API) and the International Standards Organization (ISO) are two major regulatory organizations intended to establish guidelines for both manufacturers and end users whose sole purpose is to drive standardization among the largely competitive oil and gas market to operate continuously at the best possible efficiency.
API is solely dedicated to the petroleum and energy industries while ISO rarely publishes industry-specific standards.
In the past, there has been cooperation between ISO and U.S. Oil & Gas industry, however, due to local governing regulations, requirements, and the inability to reach agreements regarding intellectual property rights, there has been a shift in design and testing standards requirements. Using API and ISO Certified Sucker Rod, coupling and sub-couplings help improve production and revenue and, more importantly, safety and quality.
Certification
While API necessitates companies to implement standards for licensing and certification, ISO remains a certification body where participation is predominantly voluntary. For leading manufacturers, implementing both sets of quality standards is part of the cost of doing business.
Both organizations establish a minimum set of design parameters with which the manufacturer must comply to claim design conformity, but the actual quality of the product and its safety for intended use is displayed through the valve testing and certification process. Qualification/certifications ensure the product meets certain design standards and desired functionality expectations.
To acquire API Monogram on your products, our example is sucker rod and their couplings. We must first establish Quality Management System (QMS), and receive certifications by successfully demonstrating our ability to meet manufacturing practices and other supporting processes in our QMS for doing business.
Which to Apply First?
ISO 9001:2015 is the current version of the ISO quality management system and has several updates from its previous version with main focal points on measuring and properly assessing the input and output processes, risk-based thinking to solve potential problems, leadership, and commitment from all levels of the organization. Quality Certifications to ISO 9001 are very common in the oil and gas industry and serve as one of the basic requirements to differentiate between product and process quality. All requirements are generic and are intended to apply to any organization regardless of the product type.
On the other hand, API qualifications are specifically developed for natural gas and oil businesses. Historically API quality management requirements are in line with ISO 9001:2008 but in 2011 it parted ways to elaborate and exceed the quality management requirements to make API Q1, 9th edition. The latest version of these guidelines was issued in 2013, with a large focus on risk management and risk assessment, a new addendum added in 2018 for supply chain requirements, and an Errata addressed in 2019 for Product Quality plans.
To summarize this, the organization must implement ISO 9001:2015 first so all the QMS requirement has been met, while at the same time organization build process, procedure, and testing to fully demonstrate their ability to produce sucker rod, couplings, and sub-couplings. Both API Spec Q1 and ISO 9001:2015 ensure that proper documentation has been developed and is in place in the event of certain proceedings.
Implementing ISO 9001 would generate a certificate for the business organization while API Q1 is a monogram program, and its compliance would have the product monogrammed as well.
Ryan N Alphany