A quick glance at any Lennox literature or product shows many seals of approval. All are important to us, but none is more important than the one that says ISO 9000 Registered. In today’s competitive world, when many claims to quality are unfounded, the ISO 9000 designation is your assurance that Lennox follows a consistent process while producing products that meet the most demanding standards in the industry.

What is ISO 9000?
ISO 9000 certifies the process or system used to manufacture a product or service. The emblem tells you that the process used to build our products complies with the requirements of the ISO 9000 quality system standard. ISO 9000 is a family of international standards for quality management and assurance. These standards cover design, procurement, production, quality assurance and delivery processes for everything from banking to manufacturing.

Because of the diversity of the various industries involved with ISO 9000, specific quality elements have been grouped into distinct models that are based on the functional or organizational capacity of the supplier and its product or service. Listed below are the models that make up the ISO 9000 family of standards.

ISO 9001 Quality Systems — Model for quality assurance in design/development, production, installation and servicing.

ISO 9002 Quality Systems — Model for quality assurance in production and installation.

ISO 9003 Quality Systems — Model for quality assurance in final inspection and test.

What is the qualification process?
The road to certification begins with ISO reviewing documentation for a company’s quality system. If the design of the system meets standards, then an on-site assessment is scheduled and conducted by a disinterested third-party agency. Depending upon the size of the facility, a team of one to four certified auditors will spend between two and five days on the plant site. In order for a plant to qualify, the auditors must verify that a company’s quality system complies with ISO standards. Certification only comes when the entire operation meets standards.

Since the entire process is demanding, grueling, and expensive, only the best run and managed companies even try for ISO 9000 certification and only the best of the best make the grade. Lennox takes great pride in the fact that all of its residential and commercial manufacturing facilities are now ISO 9000 registered.

How Did ISO Begin?
The European Common Market (ECM) was formed to promote free trade and create what some called the United States of Europe. The idea was that goods would travel between the individual countries as simply and easily as they now travel between U.S. states. Since just about all goods and services are presented with an understandable bit of national pride, the ECM saw the need for an unbiased system of quality standards and checks that everyone would recognize — and accept.

Realizing that an impartial set of strict quality standards would benefit domestic as well as international purchasing, U.S. government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, soon adopted the ISO standard. At the same time, domestic U.S. and Canadian companies recognized that these strict standards would authenticate the quality of their own manufacturing process and services and began seeking certification.

What Does ISO 9000 Mean to me?
The ISO 9000 designation is your assurance that the Lennox home comfort product you purchase was manufactured to top industry standards, which means repeatable quality — no matter who is on the production line.

Lennox has been making quality home comfort equipment for over 100 years, so it’s only fitting that the Lennox Marshalltown plant was the first HVAC manufacturing facility to earn the ISO 9002 designation for registration through the American Gas Association (AGA). To find out more about Lennox home comfort equipment, call your local Lennox dealer.