Forecasting and Time Series Analysis

Introduction

There is significant growth of maintaining international quality standard such as International Organization for Standardization's 9001 standard or ISO 9000/9001 since 20 years. There is increasing importance of quality management in order to run the business strategically and achieve the pre specified goals (Rodriguez-Arnaldo and Martínez-Lorente, 2020). Under ISO 9001, the leaders choose different trading partners; maintain fairness and accountability in running their operations across the international places (Ikram, Zhang and Sroufe, 2021). The purpose of the study is to review some data in different countries, where the organisations follows the quality management process and register under the ISO standard to secure future sustainable development (da Fonseca et al., 2019). ISO 9000 is the quality management system which helps the organisations to ensure they meet the customers and stakeholder’s needs within the statutory and regulatory requirements related to the products and services.

The quality standard can be maintained through customer focused, leadership qualities, engagement with the people, process innovation, continuous improvement in operations, evidence based decision making practice as well as relationship management with all the stakeholders of the business (da Fonseca et al., 2019). The leaders follow the ISO standard that is totality of the features and characteristics of the products or services that are able to meet the customer’s demand and satisfy the, successfully. ISO 9001, AS9100, Six Sigma, and CMMI are the standards under quality management process and there is increasing concerned of the business to register the organisation under ISO 9001 (Liu et al., 2020). The purpose of ISO 9001 is to develop quality management system where the business leader can meet the client’s needs and preferences under appropriate legal compliances and business regulations (Ikram, Zhang and Sroufe, 2021). Through ISO standard, the organisations try to maintain product quality, service innovation, operational excellence and process efficacy to provide the best quality products and services to the customers and also meet the needs of other stakeholders by ensuring high return on investment (Lira et al., 2021). In this study, there country comparison will be evaluated which are Malaysia, Ethiopia and Belgium.

Overview and comparison of registration since 1993

There is increasing concern of registering in ISO 9001 for maintaining quality standard of running the business sustainably. Three country’s data is being gathered from ISO survey statistics, from which it became easier to understand the numbers of organisations registering in the ISO 9001 for running their operations sustainably. The data is being collected from the year 1993 since 2017. The three countries considered here are Malaysia, Ethiopia and Belgium, from three different continents. It is hereby possible to draw and represent the time series data about the certificates of ISO 9001. The findings will be represented in the tabular form below (Refer to table 1).

As per the findings, there is increasing rate of certificates in Malaysia over the period of time. The entrepreneurs in this country are concerned about ISO certificates and the numbers of certificates is increasing at a rapid rate. In 1993, there were only 224 certificates and it is 10380 in the year of 2017. Hereby, there is tremendous rise of certificates and raising concern about maintaining quality standard in order to run the business in Malaysia and other international countries. The business growth in Malaysia is also high with good GDP and purchasing power parity. The leaders try to follow the quality standard and run the business ethically to meet the customer’s demand and also strengthen their stakeholder’s base by offering the, high return (ISO 9001, 2023).

On the other hand, in Ethiopia, the percentage rise in certificates in ISO 9001 is not good, due to lack of concern and efficacy in running the business operations. Till the year 2022, there were no such certificates in the country (Ikram, Zhang and Sroufe, 2021). After that, the business firms start doing certificates in 2003 in order to meet the quality standard in running their operations. There was poor growth rate of the market along with low numbers of entrepreneurs started their business. It rises over the years and it was 99 in 2016, however, the certificates in 2017 were only 56. Hence, it can be stated that, the business leaders in Ethiopia are not concerned about the quality standard and fail to meet the organisational standard in establishing their business across the globe (ISO 9001, 2023).

In addition to this, the country data of Belgium is also represented, in order to review the growth in ISO certificates in the country. There were 464 certificates in 1993 and it was growing at a significant rate. In 2017, there were only 3121 certificates in Belgium. The numbers of certificates has been increased since 204 and the numbers was 4875, however, after that; the numbers of certificates become reduced, in order to poor growth rate and industrialisation in the country (ISO 9001, 2023).

As per country comparison, the graph reviews the growth of certificates of ISO 9001 in the three countries, Malaysia, Ethiopia and Belgium. There was tremendous growth of certificates in Malaysia, with economic growth, social sustainable development and technological innovation. There was huge numbers of organisations doing their certification of ISO in order to meet international quality standard and achieve future sustainable development. However, in Ethiopia, there is no such growth in business certificates due to poor economic growth and business development (da Fonseca et al., 2019). In Belgium, there is also growth in the numbers of certification of ISO 9001, however, after 2004, the numbers of certification has been reduced till 2017. The volume of growth of business with ISO certification is the highest in Malaysia as compared to Ethiopia and Belgium. Though in 2003, the numbers of certification of Belgium is high as compared to Malaysia, where in Belgium there were 464 and in Malaysia, it was 224. However, there was significant growth rate of Malaysia with huge numbers of certifications. In 2017, there were 10380 certificates in Malaysia, whereas, in Belgium it was only 3121 and only 56 certificates were there in Ethiopia (Refer to Graph 1) (ISO 9001, 2023).

Exploring the use of smoothing techniques

Use of smoothing techniques is high, which is a short term forecasting method for representing time series data on a particular organisation, or country. The exponential smoothing is based on weighting the most recent observation with a weight and weighting the most recent forecast. The purpose of exponential smoothing is utilised to make the forecast of time series data based on the prior assumption by the users (Mastrogiacomo et al., 2021). Exponential smoothing produces accurate forecast as it is based on accurate and reliable data for predicting the next period. Moving averages smoothing technique is to determine the underlying trend in housing permits and other volatile data, the time series data can be managed by consolidating the monthly data points into longer units of time (da Fonseca et al., 2019). In this present case study, the exponential smoothing is appropriate to make predictions on the basis of past time series data. It is widely utilised for predicting the future events. The numbers of certificates in ISO 9001 will be predicted further depending on the above mention time series data on the three specific countries Malaysia, Ethiopia and Belgium (Ikram et al., 2020). It would be beneficial to utilise exponential smoothing for further prediction and making recommendation to do ISO 9001 certifications to run the business smoothly by maintaining its international quality standard (da Fonseca et al., 2019).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that, the ISO registration provides a scope to the entrepreneurs to run their business operations smoothly across the target markets by maintaining the international quality standard. Ethical practices and legal rules are also maintained well under the certification. The organisations are also able to maximise their capability in meeting the stakeholder’s needs by nursing operational excellence. It is predicted that, there will be rise in ISO certification across the countries as in the recent years, the business firms become concern to maintain international standard or securing future sustainable development. As per the data analysis, in Malaysia, there is huge scope for the business to explore the markets and establish the business sustainably by doing ISO certification. There is less scope in Ethiopia for business growth and ISO certification and in Belgium; there will be significant growth of the business doing certification to run their operations ethically.

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Reference List

da Fonseca, L.M.C.M., Domingues, J.P., Machado, P.B. and Harder, D., 2019. ISO 9001: 2015 adoption: A multi-country empirical research. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management (JIEM), 12(1), pp.27-50.

Ikram, M., Zhang, Q. and Sroufe, R., 2021. Future of quality management system (ISO 9001) certification: novel grey forecasting approach. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 32(15-16), pp.1666-1693.

Ikram, M., Zhang, Q., Sroufe, R. and Shah, S.Z.A., 2020. Towards a sustainable environment: The nexus between ISO 14001, renewable energy consumption, access to electricity, agriculture and CO2 emissions in SAARC countries. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 22, pp.218-230.

ISO 9001, 2023. ISO Survey of management system standard certification. Retrieved from: https://www.iso.org/the-iso-survey.html

Lira, J.M.S., Salgado, E.G., Beijo, L.A. and Da Silva, C.E.S., 2021. Shedding light on the diffusion of ISO 14001 across Africa, Asia and Oceania. Journal of Cleaner Production, 289, p.125724.

Liu, J., Yuan, C., Hafeez, M. and Li, X., 2020. ISO 14001 certification in developing countries: motivations from trade and environment. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 63(7), pp.1241-1265.

Mastrogiacomo, L., Carrozza, A., Maisano, D.A. and Franceschini, F., 2021. Is ‘post-decline’the next phase of the diffusion of ISO 9001 certifications? New empirical evidence from European countries. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 32(11-12), pp.1384-1403.

Rodriguez-Arnaldo, O. and Martínez-Lorente, A.R., 2020. What determinants influence the diffusion of ISO 9001 by countries?. The TQM Journal, 33(1), pp.223-246.